[Fwd: ASF Board Summary for February 18, 2004]

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 04:48:04 -0800

Looks like we're mostly in-line with the recommendations issued by the board, except possibly for:

  - author tags are officially discouraged. these create difficulties in
    establishing the proper ownership and the protection of our
    committers. there are other social issues dealing with collaborative
    development, but the Board is concerned about the legal ramifications
    around the use of author tags

Should we just go and remove them all?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: ASF Board Summary for February 18, 2004
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 04:19:01 -0800
From: Greg Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Hi all,

Since the minutes from a board meeting are not usually available until a
month or so after the meeting, I like to provide informal summaries of the
meeting. This can help to keep people informed about the actions the Board
has taken which may have an effect on the development community here at
the ASF. If you're a committer, then you'll want to read this :-)

It was quite a busy meeting:

* The Board established two new PMCs:

  - The Apache Gump Project will now oversee the development and
    maintenance of the Apache Jakarta Gump project. Stefan Bodewig is the
    new Chair of this PMC.

  - The Apache Portals Project will be pulling together a number of
    different ASF technologies that are used to create portals. Santiago
    Gala is the new project Chair.

* Sam Ruby requested to step down from the Apache Jakarta Chair position.
  The Board appointed Geir Magnusson Jr to the newly-vacant Chair.

  Thanks Sam for your time in the Chair. I also look forward to the things
  that Geir can bring to the Apache Jakarta Project!

* The Board fixed a mistake we made a few years ago. In an attempt to
  create a tight bond of a "sister project" with the PHP community, we
  created a PHP PMC. That hasn't ever been quite right, though, as the PHP
  community is self-sufficient and the ASF doesn't actually own any rights
  to the code. So, the Board closed down the PMC, and we'll move PHP to
  its proper place on our site: as a favored sister project. This won't
  actually _change_ anything, other than from an ASF legal perspective. We
  still love those guys :-)

* We confirmed the March 1 deadline for two separate events:

  - All committers must have a CLA on file by March 1. On that date, the
    infrastructure team will lock out all accounts without a CLA on file.
    If that is going to be a problem for some reason, then please discuss
    it with your project's PMC.

  - All releases made after March 1 must use the new Apache License 2.0.
    Please note that this applies to *all* releases, even maintenance
    releases where the original went out under the 1.1 license.

    Please see http://www.apache.org/dev/apply-license.html for more
    information on applying the license.

* In conjunction with the the discussion about relicensing and some
  copyright issues, the Board is establishing an official policy in this
  area:

  - each and every file must have exactly *one* Copyright line, specifying
    The Apache Software Foundation. additional individual or corporate
    copyrights are not allowed.

    (of course, binary files or certain restrictively formatted files
    cannot include the copyright and license, but the copyright/license
    header should be in everything possible)

  - for contributions of entire files/packages, it is permissible to
    include a section saying something along the lines of "originally
    written by ...". this text should occur *after* the copyright and
    license header.

  - author tags are officially discouraged. these create difficulties in
    establishing the proper ownership and the protection of our
    committers. there are other social issues dealing with collaborative
    development, but the Board is concerned about the legal ramifications
    around the use of author tags

  - it is quite acceptable and encouraged to recognize developers' efforts
    in a CHANGES file, or some other descriptive file which is associated
    with the overall PMC or release rather than individual files.

* The Board reiterated that distribution of software from our servers must
  be licensed with the Apache License or a *less* restrictive license
  (such as plain BSD or the MIT licenses).

* The XML Project submitted a plan to the Board regarding a desire to move
  to a federation of PMCs, rather than a "big umbrella" PMC. The Board is
  very supportive of this move, and is looking forward to seeing this
  happen.


I believe that is about it (whew!). Please continue any discussion on
[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions, comments, or other
concerns, then you can send them directly to me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), or to
any other ASF officer.

Cheers,
-g

--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ... ASF Chairman ... http://www.apache.org/


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