Re: The organization of xml.apache.org

[Nicola Ken Barozzi]

Jeff Turner wrote:

On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 11:53:08AM +0100, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
[snip 1-vs-many PMCs]

Then there's the legal stuff, which includes the visibility to the
board, jar files, code without copyright, code with incompatible
copyright, code with patent infringements, etc.

Hmm.. anyone care to guess how many patents Cocoon infringes?

Ok, then let's not even try then, who cares, oh and while we're at it let's remove the PMCs, why are they needed, oh and the board too, oh and why Apache at all... get real, try to be constructive. If nobody cares, tell me what we should do to solve the problem instead of institutionalizing it.

I'm suggesting that while the PMCs are worrying about the possibility of
a LGPL jar in CVS, Microsoft might be poised to wipe Apache off the map
with 0.00001% of its legal budget because Cocoon infringes some obscure
patent of theirs.

Anything can happen. We are here to take all *reasonable* measures to not make it happen. Checking jars and doing our best in making contributors sign the contributor's agreement before becoming committers all give a certain degree of protection, and not doing them just because the protection is not theoretically total (ever if this concept exists in this world) is not correct.

This is a question about the legal relevance of PMCs in general, not
directly related to the current debate.  I would personally like to know
whether PMCs are any use (legally) at all, before debating whether there
should be one or many.

They are. Things done by entities entiteled by the Apache board are doing it in the name of Apache. PMCs are. Simple committers aren't.
Thus Apache will protect entities that it has officially and legally appointed.

But the existence of PMCs is not in this debate, nor if the current legal structure of Apache. If you have questions or suggestions please post them on [EMAIL PROTECTED] and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED]

--
Nicola Ken Barozzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- verba volant, scripta manent -
(discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
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