I'm very confused by this thread. What does trademark law have to do with derivative work analysis under copyright law? Is there something specific in our FAQ or trademark policy that confuses these concepts and that we should clean up?
/Larry Please cc: trademarks@ because I'm not on the other lists. > -----Original Message----- > From: Eli Collins [mailto:e...@cloudera.com] > Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2011 9:05 AM > To: Matthew Foley > Cc: general@hadoop.apache.org; tradema...@apache.org > Subject: Re: [VOTE] Shall we adopt the "Defining Hadoop" page > > On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Matthew Foley <ma...@yahoo-inc.com> > wrote: > > I tend to agree with what I think you are saying, that > > * applying a small-number-of-patches that are > > * for high-severity-bug-fixes, and > > * have been Apache-Hadoop-committed > > to an Apache Hadoop release should not demote the result to a > "derived work". > > However, if so many patches are applied that the result cannot be > meaningfully > > correlated with a specific Apache Hadoop release, then it probably > has > > become a derived work. > > > > This is one reason why I think the definition of derived work in the > draft of the wiki is way too broad. Something that's nothing like > Hadoop at all but includes a Hadoop jar is given the same label as > something with a single security patch. I think we can come up with a > more useful definition of derived work. If we do that would help us > draw the distinction between: > 1. An Apache Hadoop release voted on the PMC, bit-for-bit identical > 2. An Apache Hadoop release + backports (eg say per the above > definition of backport) > 3. Something that is powered by Hadoop (eg HBase) > 4. Something that is not Hadoop nor powered by Hadoop (eg the way tc > Server is not powered by Apache Tomcat) > > Note that the current document does not make an exception for security > patches. I and Owen made this suggestion on this thread but the > writeup we are voting on makes no such exception. > > > But how do we draw a meaningful line across that big gray area? > That's why I'd like to > > see specific text from one of the other projects you cited as an > example. > > > > Googling didn't turn up anything in their public archives. This was in > an email exchange I had with Shane several years ago. Hopefully their > PMC can chime in. > > Thanks, > Eli