Hi everyone,
I have been busy behind the scenes, working out the final steps with the
Board. All the kudos to Stefano Mazzocchi for his patience and perseverence
in this matter, despite a very busy schedule privately and within the ASF.
Here is the *intent*;
* The Merlin/Metro team intends to *move* the project to its own home outside
of the ASF, under the Digital Product Meta Library (dpml.net) domain name.
* The current and future Merlin codebase will be released into the Public
Domain, as part of the new community building strategy.
* The team has formulated a new community building strategy, initially called
Open Participation Software, where in a nutshell we bring Wiki to Code
development.
* Bring the dpml.net up and running to a point where we can support existing
users, i.e. source repository fully in order and mailing lists operational,
prior to making public announcements on [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Now, if things just where that simple :o)
There are certain practical details, which have been raised by individual
Board members during this discussion, some being fairly simple in nature
other much more complex. Since the discussion with the Board took place,
additional information regarding CLA and ASL has also made the situation more
complex and raised additional issues. I have listed these issues below, with
a proposed solution to each ( "Don't tell me the problems, bring me the
solution." )
Issue; The Board can not release the codebase to the Public Domain, as it does
not own it. It *can* and is willing to grant an even more liberal license for
some legal entity, an organization or an individual. That license would
approve that the ASL is removed from the code. However, Copyright ownership
must then be re-established in the said work, and not compatible with our
upcoming strategy of Public Domain software.
Proposed Solution; The Board is not made part of the active process. The owner
of the Copyright can release/disclaim the ownership and place the codebase
into the Public Domain. AFAIU, that would then supercede the CLA, as the work
then no longer has any ownership, incl the contributor's.
Issue; The codebase can not (and will not) use the org.apache package name
space.
Proposed Solution; I refactor the codebase to new package names in the Avalon
source repository under a new branch. This branch will also contain exactly
the codebase in question, for everyone's review. The codebase in that branch
is what is released into the Public Domain.
Issue; Each piece of code written is *owned* by the original contributor, and
he/she *must* explicitly disclaim that ownership, for it to go to the Public
Domain.
Proposed Solution; We will identify each contributor throughout the said
codebase, and ask for such release of their work to the Public Domain. IF
someone does not want to do this, that piece of contribution will be removed
and the consequences will be dealt with later outside the ASF. Initial
non-conclusive inventory shows the following people outside the initiating
group being involved;
- akarasulu, Alex Karasulu
- cziegeler, Carsten Ziegeler
- farra, Aaron Farr
- hammett, Hamilton Verissimo de Oliveira
- leosimons, Leo Simons
<these individuals are CCed to be introduced to what is going on>
The extent of these contributions has not been established, but is
*relatively* small, and I hope the named individuals will co-operate without
it being necessary to dig that up.
Issue; There is an additional related concern that CVS moves has erased
history and that there is code that has been copied from older Avalon
packages, to new locations, either in full (not too hard) or as snippets.
Proposed Solution; We know where such code comes from, and would like to
extend the request for release to the Public Domain for such parts, from
these contributors. Without pinpointing the exact pieces, we don't know at
this point who the additional contributors are, but we can expect that the
following, among others, will surface;
- bloritsch, Berin Loritsch
- donaldp, Peter Donald
- hammant, Paul Hammant
- jefft, Jeff Turner
- leosutic, Leo Sutic
- proyal, Peter Royal
Issue; This has not been done before. We and the members of the board are not
certain about a due process.
Proposed Solution; The proposal I am making is to let this be an affair
between each of the individual contributors. We will all agree on releasing
it to the Public Domain, as I think we are entitled to. The ASF will not be
required to take any action.
Issue; The Board has raised a concern that this will send the wrong message to
the rest of the ASF. The Board has no principal objection that the original
contributors' wish to release to Public Domain is granted, just that the
rationale behind the decision can not be misinterpreted by the rest of the
ASF.
Proposed Solution; At the public announcement, a full explaination of the
situation must be issued and very clear about what is happening and why.
Additionally, if the Board is not required to do anything, and all the
Copyright issues are solved at the contributor level, the ASF itself has not
done anything at all.
I hope with this mail to start a process with basically the following steps;
1. Creation of a branch in the Avalon SVN repository to include the codebase
intended to be released into the Public Domain.
2. Refactoring of such codebase to;
- Removal of the ASL headers.
- Adding a Public Domain marker.
- Change of package names.
3. Each contributor is requested to commit a statement where they release the
ownership of their parts in the codebase of this branch into the Public
Domain. A template will be provided.
4. Everyone is invited to review the codebase.
5. The Avalon PMC will be requested to inform the Board and issue a public
announcement.
6. The Metro adventure begins.
I think we can have something much more solid in a week - and that be part of
a bigger announcement - for the moment we simply want to get the news out
that something big is happening.
Cheers
Niclas Hedhman
--
+------//-------------------+
/ http://www.bali.ac /
/ http://niclas.hedhman.org /
+------//-------------------+
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
