> On 22 May 2015, at 11:29, David E. Jones <d...@me.com> wrote: > > >> On 21 May 2015, at 06:28, Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com> wrote: >> >> I am not a lawyer and Apache's legal team should be approached before we >> embark on a plan that involves the use of a third party tool that does not >> have an Apache license or a license that is known to be compatible with >> inclusion in an Apache product. >> >> At the moment, from my reading of the source that Jacques found, it would >> not be possible to release a Moqui-based framework under an Apache license. >> Moqui is in a no-man's land where your right to use it depends on what >> country you are in and unless you are the owner, it is not clear how your >> can redistribute it internationally. >> If we write a layer to go between Moqui and the OFBiz components to replace >> the framework, users would have to decide if they could legally run Moqui >> and would have to go get it on their own and install it separately. >> >> For the moment my preference would be to focus on getting the current >> framework into a separate sub-project, clean up the current dependency >> issues, document it and release it as a separate deliverable with an Apache >> license and its own roadmap and "marketing" plan. >> >> That is based on assertions from knowledgeable people in this project that >> it is valuable on its own for others who want to develop other sorts of >> business applications. >> >> Even if Moqui is a better framework technically, the Apache license would >> make the Apache OFBiz Framework a more desirable product for an organization >> wanting to invest in creating an application. > > This is a straw man argument, doesn’t seem to apply to actual public domain > “licensing” at all. > > Software in the public domain has far fewer restrictions than the Apache 2 > license, simpler legal terms, and exists under a well established legal > framework, one that has been around for centuries and remains largely > unchanged by the continually shifting sands of copyright law around the > world. It is true that some jurisdictions have limits on which authors rights > can be disclaimed, licensed, or transferred but that applies to ALL copyright > licenses including open source and commercial ones, and to clarify for > different jurisdictions is handled by specific wording in headers and LICENSE > files, such as: > > https://github.com/moqui/moqui/blob/master/LICENSE.md > > The best source for general information about the concept and legal specifics > is: > > http://unlicense.org
I appreciate your comments Ron. I looked into this a little more and found that there appear to be certain jurisdictions (though I can’t find any references about which…) don’t recognize public domain status and for this reason the CC0 public domain attribution has alternate terms for such jurisdictions (making it an improvement over the unlicense.org legal wording): http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ I’ve updated the Moqui/etc files to use CC0 instead of unlicense.org. This should clarify any questions or doubts about the licensing and public domain status of Moqui/etc. On the topic of legal clearance (in this case copyright waiver, somewhat like the Apache CLA) I’m also putting in place AUTHORS files signed by git commit. There are only a small number of contributors other than me, but this will help establish a more firm legal position. -David
