On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Marvin Humphrey <mar...@rectangular.com> wrote: > > If you have a codebase which was not previously under the ALv2 -- say it was > either proprietary or available under a different open source license -- then > the Software Grant is hugely important from a legal standpoint. You have to > get every last copyright owner to sign it, and if you can't get them all on > board you have a mess on your hands that will have to be dealt with. > > In contrast, from a legal standpoint, a signed Software Grant doesn't change > much when the codebase is already under the ALv2. (Quite possibly it has zero > effect but I'd need to ask a lawyer about the text of the Software Grant > form to confirm that.) > > Separate from the legal aspect, we have a social tradition at Apache of only > accepting "voluntary contributions". This prevents social disharmony if > somebody doesn't want their contribution to go to a project hosted at the ASF. > > For Groovy, I agree with Benson. We already have sufficient informal evidence > that the Groovy community at large has granted social approval for the move to > Apache. The software grant does not change much about the legal status of the > codebase. Let's not get hung up on who has to sign it. >
Right, but this thread (renamed) isn't about Groovy. What I was trying to do is tease out more information about these sorts of situations, so that we can maybe put together some clear documentation. If that documentation says "when this situation comes up, please ask for help as they need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis", then that's fine. If this were cut and dry, we probably wouldn't be 18 messages deep into this thread. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
