Glyn
On 07/09/06, Niclas Hedhman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Thursday 07 September 2006 17:15, Glyn Normington wrote:
> I just came across this site. V. interesting concept, which I like.
>
> How do you ensure that people don't commit code which will cause you legal
> problems? Apache gets committers to register an ICLA ([1]) to grant
> copyright and patent rights, take responsibility that all contributions are
> their own, etc.. I wonder if you need some T&C's that need to be accepted
> when signing up for a JIRA account? Just a thought...
Good questions, especially if you are legally inclined...
Note that OPS4J do not license anything. Each contributor license their work
directly, and is responsible for its "licensability". The Apache License
itself is somewhat more explicit than the ICLA. Another interesting note;
Apache committers that works for IT companies are expected to get their
employer to sign the CCLA, which many(!) of the committers haven't.
IMHO, Apache tries to 'pretend' that they protect the committers and stands as
some kind of firewall between litigation happy lawyers and the committers.
They also manage to give the perception that "ASF makes sure" to downstream
users that all legal concerns are in order.
The matter of fact (and I have been around in ASF [EMAIL PROTECTED] for quite
a while) is that if the committers don't care, noone else have the time nor
effort to ensure everything is fine. And when shit hits the fan, it blows all
the way back to the individual committer and possibly the PMC get slapped on
the fingers of not being more on top of things.
The only assuring thing is that there are 'enough' people who care, at least
in projects I have been involved in.
When it comes to Patents; The license says that *I* will not sue someone
downstream for infringements of *my* patents covered by the licensed work.
That doesn't stop anyone else for suing downstream users. ASF even has an
explicit policy to "not go looking for patents" and only be reactive (remove
code) if there is an issue. That does not necessary stop litigation of
downstream users. After all, noone will ever sue ASF, since it has no assets.
Do I trust ASF more than I trust Geir Magnusson, Roy Fielding, Yoav Shapira or
Henri Yandell?? NO, because ASF is not much more than such individuals, of
which some care and others don't bother much.
One thing that ASF do provide, that we can't, is legal advise being available.
But funky enough, that is also "open source style" with lawyers from IBM, BEA
and others participating.
Regarding JIRA; Our Jira extension is currently 'malfunctioning' after the
move to new server and a newer version. It did require the signup'er to
approve licensing all contributions under Apache License v2.0 or later.
Hope this gives you some light...
Cheers
Niclas
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