For now, I am -1 on this. Unless I'm mistaken, the reason the license is in there is because we were specifically asked by the board to include it. Until we are explicitly told by the board that this is no longer the case, I believe it needs to stay there.
I don't count Brian's comments on legal-discuss as sufficient for a go-ahead to remove it, since he was not speaking with his board member hat on. (That is, he mailed from his CollabNet account, not his ASF account.) (Note that I would be happy to see the license requirement in the Javadocs go away; I just don't think we have sufficient say-so to do that quite yet.) -- Martin Cooper On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:50:17 +1300, Simon Kitching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > In August 2004, the build.xml file was modified so that when generating > Javadoc a copy of the apache licence was inserted as an xml comment into > the footer of generated pages. > > Unforunately, this has caused complications, because javadoc appears to > have cross-platform issues with the quote marks in the text; on > MS-Windows, the quotes need to be escaped or a javadoc error is > reported, but if they are escaped then the escape marks get copied > verbatim to the output under Linux. > > In addition, this change makes the build.xml file a bit clumsy; the > license is quite a lot of text to fit into an xml attribute! > > Yes, it would be possible to have separate footer text for windows vs > linux, but that would make build.xml even uglier. > > The licence text seemed unnecessary to me, as: > * Javadoc is not useful as a "stand-alone" product; > * Javadoc is generated from source files which *do* have complete > license text within them; and > * the output documents an API, with APIs not being copyrightable > > I posted a question to [EMAIL PROTECTED] re this, and got this > reply: > ===== > On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 07:58 -0800, Brian Behlendorf wrote: > > On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Jeffrey Thompson wrote: > > > Interesting question. First, a perspective point. The copyright notice > > > in > > > the file is primarily for Apache's benefit. It puts people on notice that > > > Apache claims copyright on the material. > > > > Well, first, it really should be: > > > > Copyright [yyyy] The Apache Software Foundation or its licensors, as > > applicable. > > [snip] > > > > > > On the other hand, the license (though it does have some benefit to > > > Apache) > > > is primarily for the user's benefit. Without it, the user has no license > > > at all. > > > > > > So, is the user put at a disadvantage in any way because the license isn't > > > embedded in the JavaDoc? Wouldn't anyone who understands how JavaDoc > > > works > > > know exactly how to find out what license is available for that material? > > > > My sense is that this is splitting hairs a bit and that the full license, > > or even the reference to it, doesn't need to be included in the javadoc > > output - just as we don't embed it as a string in compiled code when we > > distribute binaries. > > ===== > So in summary: > > I propose that the build.xml footer text be modified to contain: > > Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation > or its licensors, as applicable. > > And that the licence text be removed. > > You can see the entire thread at: > http://mail-archives.eu.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal-discuss/200501.mbox/index.html > with subject: "Licence required in Javadoc output?" > > Regards, > > Simon > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
