Given that for works published after March 1, 1989 it is not even necessary to place a copyright notice to benefit from copyright law protection, I do not see why the long form is absolutely necessary. Moreover, the next version of the Apache Software License will specifically allow the short form. It may be slightly better to include the whole license in certain obscure circumstances but that does mean that the reference to the license (a.k.a. the short form) is useless and that it should be disallowed.
Here is what Roy Fielding had to say on the subject. I am quoting without explicit permission hoping that he will not mind. :-( <quote> > and inclusion by reference isn't suddenly becoming official with the > 2.0 licence; until we hear counsel that says its safe, we most likely > won't permit it regardless of the size of the licence text. WTF? Of course it is safe, and we've already had several lawyers review it, not to mention ample evidence from the MPL and GPL that other lawyers believe it is safe with the proper reference text. The proposed 2.0 license text was specifically written to support inclusion by reference. The problem with the 1.1 license is that it lacked a way to define the scope of what was covered beyond "this file". As such, the board has not approved its use by reference for our own products. Even so, it is still "safe" (albeit confusing) to use it by reference provided that the file starts with a proper copyright line and "All rights reserved." After all, our license simply spells out the conditions under which we reduce our own rights -- it doesn't matter whether or not the user can see the full agreement because without the agreement they cannot legally copy the file at all. ....Roy </quote> I do not understand what Roy means by "the scope of what was covered beyond 'this file'" Copyright law only protects the expression of an idea, so I am baffled by what is meant by the scope beyond the file, that is the written expression of the software developer. How can copyright law apply to anything beyond the file? Anyway, in the last paragraph Roy makes it clear that without the licence the software cannot be legally copied. Thus, asserting the Apache copyright in each file and referencing the Apache Software License should be sufficient to protect our copyright. What am I missing? Was there ever a closure to this question? At 08:48 04.12.2002 +0100, you wrote:
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Darrell DeBoer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't know where it started, but if someone can someone tell me > definitively that this is against ASF rules, I will move to rectify > the situation. Roy Fielding and several other board members have repeatedly stated that the short version is not acceptable IIRC. License 2.0 is supposed to help. Stefan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-- Ceki TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. -- Jon Postel, RFC 793 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
