Pardon me from jumping in but... Roman's original question was: > > > > *For example, what would be the legal basis for stopping a 3d party from > releasing a snapshot of ASF's project source tree and claim it to be a > release X.Y.Z of said project?* >
So he was asking about someone taking what ASF calls a "snapshot" and making a release out of it, claiming that it is a release of the same project. I am also not sure if he meant "SNAPSHOT" in the Maven sense, or just the state of the project's source repository at a specific moment in time. And when Jim said: > > *A snapshot is not a release. Licenses "kick in" at distribution/ release.* > Jim might have been meaning "SNAPSHOT" and "RELEASE" in the Maven sense. This is all just my speculation but I thought it might clarify some misunderstanding. Thanks... - Ajoy On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:15 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > > > On 8/20/15, 9:26 AM, "Benson Margulies" <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > >However, a quick search reveals that there are precisely zero > >occurrences of the word 'release' in version 2.0 of the Apache > >License. > > > >So, I don't know what Jim meant by 'licenses kick in at release', but > >my view is that putting source in a public Subversion server or git > >repo is a publication in the legal sense, and that the Foundation > >grants the Apache license to that content, since we nowhere > >communicate that we grant some other (lack of) license until the point > >of release. To me, the plain sense of Jim's phrase is that, somehow, > >the AL does not apply until there's a release, and I can't make heads > >or tails of that. > > I assumed Jim meant that the public should not feel certain that the AL > header is correct on items found in the repo, but should feel more certain > it is correct for files in a release, since, supposedly, a bit more > scrutiny about the headers happened in creating the release. > > IIRC, one of my employer’s lawyers said that the AL applies to any code > written to be under AL whether it has the header or not. Headers are a > convenient signpost, but are not required to connect licensing and > copyright to lines of code. > > -Alex > >
