> Virtual artifacts have the potential to: > . simplify build environments > . simplify installation documentation > . reduce the bar of entry for building ASF software > . reduce support requests > . allow meta-data to be associated with 3rd > party artifacts
How do you propose to implement such artifacts? What impact will that have on web site deployment and mirroring requirements? > They are not about: > . hosting 3rd party artifacts within ASF repository > . circumventing licenses of 3rd party products > . exposing ASF to liability The issue I had in mind was more about confusion, e.g., confusing the source of the file, which might not be acceptable to the distributor. In our case, consider this page: http://www.apache.org/info/referer-dotcom.html. Look, you never know what is going to happen in the real-world. Some years ago we (DevTech) wrote a search engine. As a demo, we indexed the Star Wars site, which was otherwise hard to navigate at the time, and provided people with search capabilities. We had none of their IP on our site. We offered a site-specific search, similar to asking Google to restrict its search to their site, except we offered a few other views of the data. Even so, we received an official request from Lucas' legal council to cease. The legal basis they claimed was that they can control who uses their trademark, and their URL contains their trademark. --- Noel
