Hello,
Looking at the October 2003 draft of the Apache License, Version 2.0 ("AL2") I have a few queries/observations I'd like to share regarding Section 7.
> 7. Redistribution with Modification. You may modify Your copy or > copies of the Work or any portion of it, thus forming another work > product based on the Work (a "Derivative Work"), and reproduce and > distribute such modifications or the Derivative Work, provided > that You also meet the following conditions: > > (a) You must give any other recipients of the Derivative Work a > copy of this License along with the Derivative Work.
So far so good...
> (b) You must retain, in the source code of any Derivative Work > that You distribute, all copyright, patent, or trademark > notices from the source code of the Work, excluding those > notices that only pertain to portions of the Work that have > been excluded from the Derivative Work. If the Work includes a > "NOTICE" file as part of its source code distribution, the > Derivative Work must include a readable copy of the notices > contained within that NOTICE file, excluding those notices > that only pertain to portions of the Work that have been > excluded from the Derivative Work, in at least one of the > following places: within a NOTICE file distributed as part of > the Derivative Work; within the source code or documentation, > if provided along with the Derivative Work; or, within a > display generated by the Derivative Work, if and wherever such > third-party notices normally appear. You may add Your own > notices alongside or as an addendum to the original NOTICE > information. The contents of the NOTICE file are for > informational purposes only and do not modify the terms and > conditions of this License.
Version 1.1 of the Apache Software License makes it very clear that a derivative work can be distributed in either source or binary form. I believe Section 5 still allows closed source derivatives, though it doesn't specifically state this; I fear it may actually /increase/ the number of "can I include X in my commercial product"-type questions.
I note that with a BSD-ish template-type licence, including the 1.x Apache Software License, the name of the copyright holder is part of the licence and hence will be included alongside any binary derivative. This would appear not to be the case in binary derivatives licensed under AL2; only the AL2 licence itself and the NOTICEs, if any, would need to be reproduced. Details of the copyright owner of an AL2'd work could be lost if not included as a NOTICE. This may not be a cause of concern but I thought it was worth noting anyway.
> (c) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices > stating that You changed the files.
This is a cause of confusion for me, to be honest. It seems perfectly clear in the case of source files, but how can I do it for binary executables and library files, for .class or .jar files? If this should only apply to source files, could this be stated?
I hope these comments are genuinely useful; for what it's worth in general I think the new licence is very good. (I am not a lawyer.)
All the best,
Dave
P.S. Section 4 grants a "worldwide" licence to use; can I assume it also applies to /off-planet/ usage? ;o)
