On 09/14/2017 10:08 PM, John D. Ament wrote: > Steve, > > Apologies for the late reply. I had this on my todo for last week, thought > I responded, but didn't. > > On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 2:06 PM Steve Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I've thoroughly gone through the Daffodil codebase and documented all >> the potential code ownership issues that I think need to be resolved >> before we can donate the code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). >> My findings are below. >> >> 1) The majority of the code is copyright NCSA, Tresys, or Mike Beckerle. >> The contributors from NCSA and some from Tresys now work at different >> companies and so contacting all of them may be difficult. We have >> contacted representatives for these entities and are working to get SGAs >> from NCSA, Tresys, and Mike Beckerle in place. We believe these three >> SGAs should cover contributions made by past employees. >> > > There's two types of open source. For the situation you're describing, it > makes sense to wait on SGAs since the copyright owners are companies not > individuals (I think Mike has already signed off). (the other type is when > the individuals retain the IP, in which case the ICLA is preferred but only > required if the copyright says something like "Contributors to <Project>") > > >> >> 2) Some contributions came from other entities that we no longer have >> contact with. Based on the git log, this includes: >> >> - Jeffrey Jacobs (Navy Research Lab) >> - Stephanie Huber (Air Force Research Lab) >> - Alonza Mumford (Department of Defense) >> - Jonathan Cranford (MITRE) >> - Jacob Baker (Booze Allen Hamilton) >> >> Of this list, the first three are federal government entities. Our >> understanding is that federal government contributions are Public >> Domain, and so perhaps we do not need an SGA for these contributions? >> This needs to be confirmed. >> > > I forget the rules here. You're right that its public domain, but there > are some nuances with then including it in a grant. I'd actually recommend > asking the question on legal-discuss list and get their opinion. Our > present VP Legal is actually Chief Architect for NASA JPL so he should be > pretty familiar with the situation. > > >> >> We have looked at the patches contributed from the non-government >> entities (Jonathan Cranford and Jacob Baker), and have confirmed that >> their changes have since been replaced as Daffodil has evolved, so we do >> not believe an SGA is necessary for their contributions. >> >> 3) A handful of tests and schema files were given to us from IBM and >> include an IBM copyright. The license for these files is unknown. We are >> working with IBM to get an SGA for these contributions. >> >> 4) The tests in item 3 include example snippets taken out of the DFDL >> specification, which are labeled as copyright Global Gird Forum (now >> renamed to the Open Grid Forum (OGF)). Regarding the ownership of these >> files, the OGF has stated: >> >> In general OGF takes the position that it does not copyright or >> license software, and that the examples used in specifications are >> just that, examples of how to use the specification rather than >> separately copyrighted code snippets. >> >> The full copyright notice regarding the contents of OGF documents is at: >> >> https://www.ogf.org/dokuwiki/doku.php/about/copyright >> >> The copyright is copied at the end of this email for reference [1]. To >> me, this means we do not need an SGA, but may need to include the >> copyright notice from the link. >> >> > > Agreed, more likely than not we would place that in our LICENSE file. We > can confirm this on legal when we're ready to do a release. > > > >> 5) We have copied code from the Scala library into Daffodil. The license >> is 3-clause BSD and should not cause any issues, aside from needing to >> include the license. >> > > Agreed. Just make sure none of the grants indicate this code is included. > Same for the next. > > >> >> 6) We have copied code from the Passera library into Daffodil. The >> license is 3-clause BSD and should not cause any issues, aside from >> needing to include the license. >> >> We additionally have dependencies on other libraries, but none of their >> code is included in the Daffodil source. We believe they are all >> compatible with the Apache v2 license, including Apache v2, BSD, MIT, >> and ICU. >> > > Dependencies are generally not an issue, unless they're GPL. Even LGPL has > some interesting ways to work around. > > >> >> We are also working on getting a CCLA from Tresys, since all initial >> committers are employed by Tresys. >> >> - Steve >> >> >> [1] Open Grid Forum Full Copyright Notice: >> >> * Copyright (C) Open Grid Forum (insert applicable years). Some Rights >> Reserved. * >> >> This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to >> others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or >> assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and >> distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, >> provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included >> as references to the derived portions on all such copies and derivative >> works. The published OGF document from which such works are derived, >> however, may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the >> copyright notice or references to the OGF or other organizations, except >> as needed for the purpose of developing new or updated OGF documents in >> conformance with the procedures defined in the OGF Document Process, or >> as required to translate it into languages other than English. OGF, with >> the approval of its board, may remove this restriction for inclusion of >> OGF document content for the purpose of producing standards in >> cooperation with other international standards bodies. >> >> The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be >> revoked by the OGF or its successors or assignees. >> >> >
Thanks for the answers John. Sounds like we're on the right track. For reference, I've started a thread on legal-discuss for further clarifications here: https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/5bea1471ba0b98a14c87d066e83faf377e6e537ed02ee9dc6b583569@%3Clegal-discuss.apache.org%3E - Steve
