Improve license files
---------------------
Key: WOOKIE-250
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WOOKIE-250
Project: Wookie
Issue Type: Improvement
Components: Project Administration
Affects Versions: 0.9.1
Environment: n/a
Reporter: Paul Sharples
Fix For: 0.9.1
Ate made some suggestions we might make to our license files when he reviewed
the 0.9.0 release on the wookie-dev list. Creating an issue for it here so its
more visible for 0.9.1
* wookie.war has DISCLAIMER/LICENSE/NOTICE/RUNTIME_LICENSE files in root folder:
Having these files in the war root means these will be accessible as web
resources... While still pretty harmless in this case/release, its a bad
practice and could actually pose a security issue as everyone can thereby
find/read which runtime artifacts (including there version) are in use.
The expected/advised location for these files would be under /META-INF.
* NOTICE/LICENSE/RUNTIME_LICENSE files in general:
The current ASF policy is that these files only need/should attribute whatever
is actually packaged (note: this equally concerns the svn tree, which in itself
can and should be regarded as a "distribution"). Anything not "packaged" need
(should) not be attributed. These files serve a legal purpose only, and
anything not needed and/or redundant will only make it more difficult to
maintain and validate and properly.
Dependencies not packaged/distributed, but for instance needed (only) for
building is not required to be attributed in these files. If there are specific
(buid/runtime) requirements users should be aware of then those should be
mentioned and explained in additional README, BUILD_NOTES, etc. files, only.
* License attribution to other ASF projects packaged sources/artifacts:
>From a legal POV, this is not needed: the basic (required) NOTICE and LICENSE
>attribution that the distribution includes ASF produces software under the ASL
>2.0 license already covers all legal requirements.
While mentioning each and every other ASF project source/artifact in the
LICENSE files is not harmful in anyway, it is a lot of extra and unneeded
effort not easy to maintain properly.
For example, the LICENSE file does mention the
shindig-common-1.1-BETA5-incubating.jar (which is *not* packaged in the source
distribution, more about that below), but does not mention
shindig/dist/shindig-features-1.1-BETA5-incubating.jar which *is* packaged in
the source distribution. However neither is really problematic as isn't needed
anyway
Another example is some extra jackrabbit jars which are not mentioned in either
the LICENSE or RUNTIME_LICENSE file but are packaged with the binary
distributions.
And while commons-io and commons-email are mentioned in the LICENSE file (but
not packaged in the source distribution), they are not mentioned in the
RUNTIME_LICENSE file while they *are* packaged in the binary distributions.
* RUNTIME_LICENSE file:
- The RUNTIME_LICENSE file is used/intended to cover the requirements for
(both) the binary distributions, wookie war/standalone.
However, as a single file it covers both distributions while the war
distribution does not package several artifacts (and thus licenses) contained
in the standalone distribution (Eclipsse, Jetty, Servlet/JSP etc.)
>From a legal POV, this is not "wrong", but AFAIK not ideal either.
To "solve" this however would require maintaining two separate RUNTIME_LICENSE
files which isn't ideal either. I have no strong opinion on this but it might
be considered to split these files up if causing not too much of a burden to
maintain.
- More/most serious is the omission of the 3rd party license attributions for
many (all?) of the packaged Widgets in the RUNTIME_LICENSE file. While these
are distributed as "source", they are (thereby) packaged in the binary
distributions and as such *should* be attributed in the RUNTIME_LICENSE file.
However, as these 3rd party licenses are properly mentioned in the LICENSE file
which also is packaged in the binary distribution, legally everything probably
is still OK, even if somewhat confusing.
- My suggestion for future releases however is to consider packaging only a is
single LICENSE file within a release artifact/distribution and thus maintain
separate LICENSE files for source and binary distributions (optionally even two
for the latter). And the same holds for the NOTICE file which currently also
covers everything for both source and binary distributions.
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