Roy T. Fielding <fielding <at> gbiv.com> writes: > > On Jul 29, 2005, at 3:33 PM, Dalibor Topic wrote: > > Can I redistribute Apache Derby, unmodified, under the MIT > > license? > > No, the MIT license is insufficient to meet the terms of the > Apache license.
Thanks for the fast reply, Roy. Could you elaborate a bit on what the MIT license specifically lacks to meet the terms? > > Looking at the ASL2, it seems that I can chose > > my terms for Derivative Works as a whole freely, as long as the terms I > > chose are not contrary to the ASL2. Is the MIT license acceptable as > > a license for a Derivative Works as a whole? > > Yes, provided the license and notices within the source code of > the original work remain intact. OK. I am pretty new to the concept of sublicensing, so please bear with me while I try to figure out what the limits are. I've already seen that different Academic licenses have different ways to go about sublicensing, which is somewhat confusing. Is there some FAQ from the ASF on how the Apache Software License 2.0 works in practice? I'd imagine that to be a regular question for companies and individuals alike, who wish to reuse ASF's software in their own solutions, and are freshly starting to figure out the licensing framework within which the ASF operates. "Make money fast by creating propretary forks of ASFs software", that sort of stuff. ;) > Ditto, it is separable and therefore not a derivative work. OK. Then let me try something else, a bit more creative, that weaves the Apache code together with my work. Let's say I, in a fit of Art, use my webcam to create a mugshot of myself and turn it into a PNG file of, say, 1024x768 pixels. Then I turn the 'face.png' file into a pure HTML rendering of the PNG file, such that in a 1024x768 sized table, each table cell corresponds to one pixel of the PNG picture, and its background colour is chosen according to the colour of the corresponding pixel. In other words, something like http://perl.infoware.ne.jp/~hoyama/toro.gif.html only with a nice picture of myself. For each cell of the huge table, then, I proceed to insert the corresponding character in the stream of the Apache Software 2.0 licensed source code into each cell. In order to have good looking code not ruin my HTMLized picture, I also set the text colour for each cell to the colour of the backgound of each cell, making it invisible, but nevertheless adding to the significance, and weight of my artwork. I chose to publish the resulting HTML file under the MIT license. Is it a Derivative Work under the apache license? Under which license are the single, invisible characters in each cell? Under which license is the output of lynx -dump on the file? If separability is the key issue here, then let my Derivative Work consist of the original Work with all comments, save for copyright notices removed. > We don't own any patents. The contributors own the patents and they > choose whether or not the license is actually terminated in that case. Interesting. This is the first time I hear that the termination in a patent retaliation clause is not mandatory. I have always read "shall" to mean "will/must", rather than meaning "may". > >> In contrast, if you receive software via the GPL or MIX/X or > >> BSD licenses, there is no patent license at all and your rights > >> are equivalent to those where the license was terminated. > > > > Is that any different from someone who has received a Derivative Work > > based on software covered by the ASL2? Afaict, the patent license grant > > does not mention granting any rights to Derivative Works. I suppose > > I am wrong, but I can't see it in the license yet. > > The patent grant is in the CLA, not ASL2. It uses pretty much the same language as far as I can see, without mentioning Derivative Works, so the question remains: does the patent grant extend to Derivative Works? Or does it solely cover the unmodified original Works as distributed by the Foundation? > If none of the contributors has patents, then they can't license > them in the first place and the clause is already a noop. Cool. Maybe all it takes to make specific ALv2 licensed works to be useable within GPLd works would be to have each contributor state that they have some/no patents that are "necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted", for example in the NOTICE file? Then one could safely pick the patent-unencumbered code, and ignore the rest. > Would the scenario discussed by Rosen for the AFL be any > > different for the ASL2? > > Yes. The patent license in ASL2 is not sublicenseable. It is a > direct grant from the contributor to all recipients of Apache > software works to which they contributed. OK. There is no patent grant for recepients of Derived Works licensed as a whole under licenses other than the ALv2. Correct? cheers, dalibor topic --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
