All that is required to clean up the headers is to have some sort of official permission from IBM to ASF that allows it to be done. That or an IBM-employed committer needs to be identified as authorized to do it. The basic requirement is under "Source File Headers for Code Developed at the ASF" at <http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html> (A lengthy treatment is at <http://incubator.apache.org/guides/mentor.html#initial-ip-clearance>).
The process is simple: "If the source file is submitted with a copyright notice included in it, the copyright owner (or owner's agent) must either: "1.remove such notices, or "2.move them to the NOTICE file associated with each applicable project release, or "3.provide written permission for the ASF to make such removal or relocation of the notices." Andrew Rist provided this for the Oracle contribution. I don't understand the hold-up for the IBM contribution. Also, this sort of thing is expected to be handled during incubation. The specific statement is that "It is recommended that the initial clean-up be is started before the code is committed. It MUST be completed before any releases are cut." So there is flexibility so long as no code appears in releases, but as you point out, code is leaking from the Symphony base into releases "under the table." That is not healthy. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Pedro Giffuni [mailto:p...@apache.org] Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 10:15 To: orc...@apache.org; dev@openoffice.apache.org Subject: RE: Symphony IP Cleanup Hi Dennis; I am afraid that what we are doing is exactly cherry picking code and creating patches. AFAICT there is no one actively working on the symphony code. If I notice something I like, I open a bugzilla issue and try to get someone from IBM to look at it. The code still has unacceptable components (at least lcc cpp) and I am not sure it builds. I guess if you find it too bothersome we could move the code to Apache Extras, but it is still useful to be able to look at it somewhere. Pedro. Ps. ApacheCon was fun indeed!