help with the patent position.
Longer:
An SGA only grants a patent license for the patents owned by the
grantor for any patents that may read on the submitted code. I
seriously doubt that Edgewall has any patents (a quick search says
"no"). Thus, we receive no additional protection via an SGA. All that
an SGA would allow us to do, that we cannot today, is to relicense the
code under the ALv2.
Also note that simply licensing code under the ALv2 does not provide
any patent protection. A committer from company Alpha can commit some
code to the project. Any patents that Alpha owns that read on *only*
that code will come along with a patent license grant. But company
Beta may have patents that read on it. Shoot, company Alpha may have
patents that read on *other* portions of the code, to which they have
not contributed. By contributing to the code base, you only provide a
grant for the portions you commit, not to the entire codebase.
Incorporating BSD/MIT licensed code directly into our products has
been a standard practice. The Apache HTTPD Server has included the
PCRE and Expat code for well over a *decade* now.
There are three types of code that will go into the final Apache
Bloodhound release:
1) the original stuff from Edgewall
2) the pre-packaged popular plugins from third-parties
3) original code committed here at the ASF
The code under (1) will have its original BSD license. The code from
(2) will have its license, or it may be ALv2 if we get SGAs from those
developers. And, of course, all code under (3) will be under ALv2.
The package/release as a whole will be under the ALv2. Looking at
individual files, you'll see that file's specific license (since the
header must remain unless/until the original copyright holder decides
to remove it).
An SGA to cover the parts under (1) would be nice, but is certainly
not required for us to be able to deliver an Apache Bloodhound
release.
Cheers,
-g
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 18:36, Dennis E. Hamilton
<dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote:
> <orcmid comments="in-line" />
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hyrum K Wright [mailto:hyrum.wright@wandisco.com]
> <
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201112.mbox/%3cCAJjMeYMb0+uCrbuaX83b1NSbhq8G3SfzafXUkfrKjxi=ubQzQA@mail.gmail.com%3e>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 10:06
> To: general@incubator.apache.org; dennis.hamilton@acm.org
> Cc: Mark Struberg; Ian Wild; Greg Stein; hwright@apache.org
> Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Apache Bloodhound
>
> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton
> <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote:
>> Uh, here's the TRAC License: <http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracLicense>.
>>
>> You have to do what it says. The language is very simple. So is the
>> Copyright notice.
>>
>> If this is the codebase that you propose to be the foundation of Bloodhound
>> development, I suspect that an SGA (Software Grant Agreement) from Edgewall
>> Software is preferred in order to have it be licensable by Apache under the
>> ALv2. If an SGA is possible, it would deal with the patent issue that has
>> been raised on this thread. See <http://www.apache.org/licenses/#grants>.
>
> "preferred" or "required"?
>
> <orcmid>
> I said preferred because I don't know where the line is.
> A substantial body of work is being brought over and it
> seems to me that it should be required, but I'm not the
> authority. However, to the extent that this draft is
> authoritative, I would use it for guidance:
> <http://incubator.apache.org/guides/mentor.html#initial-ip-clearance>.
> </orcmid>
>
> I'll also note that small bits of the Trac test suite are already
> being distributed in ASF releases of Subversion and hosted in our
> public repo. See:
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/NOTICE
> and
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/subversion/bindings/swig/python/tests/trac/test.py
>
> Subversion still maintains the required attribution per the Trac
> License, but also adds the ALv2. This was a point of discussion
> during the Subversion incubation, but was vetted and approved and has
> been the status quo for over 2 years.
>
> <orcmid>
> I have no reason to believe that the SVN usage is a precedent for
> the Bloodhound situation, nor vice versa. I'm not touching that.
> </orcmid>
>
>> I have no idea how much the SGA is a requirement for the incubator proposal
>> moving forward. Your champion or proposed mentors should know. I recommend
>> that be figured out ASAP. How that will be handled might need to be added
>> to the incubator proposal, also.
>
> What specific questions would you like to see addressed in the proposal?
>
> <orcmid>
> I think the need for an SGA from Edgewall should be identified
> as a key requirement in being able to have a successful IP
> Clearance. This is not a small amount of BSD code, it is the
> foundation for the Bloodhound project.
> It would also be good to indicate in the proposal whether the
> copyright holders have expressed any willingness to provide such
> an agreement. This strikes me as a material issue for incubation.
> </orcmid>
>
>> - Dennis
>>
>> If you end up needing a plan B, it might be appropriate to move where
>> further development under the BSD license is possible. SourceForge might be
>> an useful choice. SourceForge offers Trac as an available feature for
>> projects, and it also supports SVN as one of its repository services. (I
>> only mention that because I was looking into the SourceForge 2.0 beta
>> recently and I have some small projects there.)
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Niclas Hedhman [mailto:niclas@hedhman.org]
> <
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201112.mbox/%3cCADmm+KcJGtTeOtH9wz-kfMKGkFgvtEmT9RwkgoNU0aZ+V2SMMg@mail.gmail.com%3e>
>> Sent: Monday, December 05, 2011 18:38
>> To: general@incubator.apache.org
>> Cc: Mark Struberg; Ian Wild; Greg Stein
>> Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Apache Bloodhound
>>
>> I suggest legal-discuss@ is involved to answer it. Although it is Cat
>> A license, I don't think it is fully kosher, as we promise that the
>> original contributor hasn't submarined any patents, but BSD doesn't
>> state this. Maybe it is a tiny point, but more eyes from
>> legal-discuss@ won't hurt...
>
> It would surprise me if this question isn't already answered. In fact, it is:
> http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a
>
> I humbly submit that reopening the question with legal-discuss@ would
> be disrespectful of their time.
>
> <orcmid>
> I agree. There is enough information to do the right thing.
> Be careful though. Being a dependency to an Apache product
> does not alleviate requirements for IP clearance.
> Inclusion within an Apache project does not mean that the
> Apache project notice can be substituted without appropriate
> SGAs or iCLAs. It seems to me that the IP Clearance guidelines
> are clearly applicable to the Trac/Bloodhound case.
> This policy provides useful concrete guidance:
> <http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html>.
> </orcmid>
>
>
> -Hyrum
>
> [ ... ]
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