Re: Copyright Statement

[David E. Jones]

Chris,











http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/r

-David


On Jan 14, 2007, at 10:24 PM, Chris Howe wrote:

Hopefully the resource J. Aaron linked to answers your question about copyrights. Note that in that same area of the site there are various pages with helpful related information. The comments from Leo Simmons on the incubator mailing list were helpful too. As I understand it however the intellectual property is created it is the responsibility of the PMC to review the intellectual property issues and incorporate the code into the open source project. That's the only way it gets in. This may sound a little bit heavy handed, but that is how the organization is setup. As Leo mentioned there may be scenarios that are not well met by this structure, and yes without working directly with a committer on an effort collaboration through the SVN repo of the project is more difficult, but I still highly recommend it. There are major advantages to working on things through the resources of the project rather than doing things on your own and then trying to work it into the project. I have updated the Contributors Best Practices page on docs.ofbiz.org about this, and I highly recommend reading it, for anyone and everyone who is working with OFBiz. I made a few changes to make certain things more clear, but most of the issues discussed in this and other threads recently were actually already addressed on that page. Here is a link to it:

David,

Let me know at which point I become a pain in my
inquiry about this. It's really not my intention.  I'm
still looking for a model that I can use to offer
contributions with the least amount of administrative
work necessary from the sandbox to the ASF.  Copying
the manner that OFBiz is able to place the copyright
ASF placard on every file without notice of other
copyright holders in that file would seem the path of
least resistance. I'm trying to find the legal theory
being used as my understanding is that there is only a
license grant being offered from contributors and not
copyright assignment with the Apache License v2.

If I'm able to make a valid claim to copyright and
exclude other holders, then I'm able to appropriately
grant license to the ASF.

If the ASF doesn't hold copyright in it's entirety,
then I would think this would need to be clarified
somewhere inside the project(ie LICENSE or NOTICE
files). Even failing that need, the only thing I'm
finding on apache.org is the intent to gain copyright
ownership approved in past board minutes but never an
actual vehicle to attain copyright ownership.
ie used the google search
site:www.apache.org copyright assignment

Can you point me to a definitive place for this
answer?

TIA,
Chris

--- "David E. Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Chris,

Do you mean the NOTICE and LICENSE files in OFBiz?
You'll only find
information on libraries included and their
corresponding licenses in
those files.

I recommend looking on the apache.org site for
general information
about the ASF and its policies.

-David


On Jan 14, 2007, at 9:22 PM, Chris Howe wrote:

David,
Can you point me to where the copyright policy
addresses the contributors as being the copyright
holders for the OFBiz code instead of ASF?

<inquiring

tone, not skepticism>  I'm not seeing them in

NOTICE

or LICENSE, but they are rather long :-)

TIA,
Chris

--- "David E. Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

wrote:

Chris,

Have you read the ASF licensing and copyright

policy

documents? They
address this, and in general this sort of thing

in

pretty good detail.

Don't worry, you're not the first to notice this.

As for copyright statements in other projects:

there

are certain
cases where the files are not 100% licensed

through

the ASF, but are
rather a combination of third party code and code
developer for/
through the ASF. Also not that while it is the
responsibility of
committers to monitor this sort of thing in

patches

and their own
work, we do sometimes make mistakes. In general

for

the OFBiz code it
has been thoroughly reviewed and such things well
vetted through the
incubation process.

-David


On Jan 14, 2007, at 8:45 PM, Chris Howe wrote:

While searching for more answers on how to make

the

ofbiz-sandbox ASF friendly (both legally and ASF
administrative safe guard wise), I came across a
distinction between contributions to the Free

Software

Foundation (FSF) and contributions to the ASF

that

I

think may have been inadequately addressed in

OFBiz.

IANAL.

Contributions to FSF require a copyright

assignment,

while contributions to ASF generally, simply

grant

license of use, modification, etc.  This

distinction

allows FSF software to carry the copyright

notice

"Copyright YYYY The Free Software Foundation" by
itself.

I looked at a couple of the other ASF TLPs and

noticed

they were either missing a copyright notice in
individual files or in the case of Geronimo, had

the

following:

 * Copyright 2004, 2005 The Apache Software

Foundation

or its licensors, as applicable.

I only looked at a couple files, so this is no

where

near a comprehensive search.  As it is now,

nearly

every file in OFBiz says:

    Copyright 2001-2006 The Apache Software

Foundation

Which perhaps in and of itself is a copyright
violation. One for the beginning year (it may be
materially false as I wouldn't think a copyright

can

be assigned retroactively) and two for the

exclusion

of those who may actually have the copyright

(the

author, etc).  To my knowledge, there was no

request

to the community for copyright assignment.

I hope no one construes this as causing a fuss

or

as a

distraction.  One of the reasons for the move to

the

ASF for the project, as I understood it, was a
proactive step to avoid legal hassles.  I just

want us

to take advantage of that benefit and protect

all

of

our hard work.

TIA for your feedback,
Chris

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