On 9 August 2011 18:47, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Dave, >> >> I've been pondering this some more. (I saw Drew's post on the >> Apache-license wording being there since at least April.) >> >> I don't know about injection of the Apache license notice in <head> >> comments, but I am definitely concerned that we are adding a "Copyright 2011 >> Apache Software Foundation" at the bottom of the pages that are from a third >> party. This is the closest guidance I could find: >> <http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html>, and it mentions that a >> terms-of-use for web sites is forthcoming. We may need to ask about that. >> I am pretty sure we are not planning to include these web pages into a >> release itself. >> > > The Apache home page says in its footer: "Copyright © 2011 The Apache > Software Foundation, Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0." > > IANAL, but that in itself only makes sense to me for pages where > either 1) the work was authored by Apache employees (a "work for > hire") or 2) Content to which Apache was assigned the copyright.
Since this is a point of contention in some quarters I just want to point out that the ASF never has copyrights assigned to it (in any materials) we have licences to use peoples copyrighted materials, but the copyright always remains with the individual. This is the case for the very few contractors we use as well. > But those should be quite rare conditions. In the typical case, we > each individually (or our employers) own the copyright, and via the > iCLA and the Apache 2.0 license we give Apache (and each other and our > users) a license to use, modify and redistribute the content. But I > don't see where we've assigned Apache the copyright. Just to repeat *nobody* has assigned any copyright to the ASF, ever. > Maybe Apache is claiming copyright on derived work that consists of > the the entire page, so the whole mashup, not just the content, but > the visual design, color schema layout, the entire visual combination? IANAL but I have always understood that to be the case. It is copyright in the collated works of all the individual copyright holders. If people in the community are concerned about this and are not reassured by my assurance that nobody is assigning copyright to the ASF and the copyright notices do not intend to assert ownership over any individuals IP then someone needs to ask on [email protected] in order to get an official statement from the legal PMC. Note that I've snipped the bit where Denis says he intends to run it past legal once everything is in place. So it is safe to sit and wait unless you are worried. Ross
