On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 11:38 AM, ant elder <ant.el...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gosh i'm pretty sure we _don't_ allow things like (L)GPL dependencies
> in Incubator releases, we allow them in the source in SVN but i don't
> recall any releases like that.
I know AOO had interactions with Legal regarding dmake, dictionaries and so
on, though I don't recall exactly what went into their release. I would be
surprised if any category X dependencies have wound up in an incubating
release without Legal's involvement.
Lucy's early incubating releases had two Perl-licensed (Artistic/GPL)
dependencies (which were not bundled, but had to be downloaded and installed
separately by the consumer). We sought a variance from Legal and got specific
approval from the Legal VP for our plan, which involved ditching both of the
problematic dependencies prior to graduation:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-86
Are there other examples?
> Anyway thats beside the point, ok so lets have this be a precedent
> that sets Incubator policy - we now have some wiggle room while
> incubating to do a release that violates ASF release policy as long as
> it will be fixed soon in another release and definitely before
> graduating.
It seems that with regards to this Bloodhound release, the issue is restricted
to LICENSE/NOTICE, an area where ASF policies are notoriously unclear and
conformance is arguably spotty even among TLPs. So long as the licenses of
all dependencies are being obeyed (e.g. no license headers or mandatory files
stripped from source files) and usage is compatible with ASF policy (no
category X dependencies, etc), I agree with the judgment call that an
incubating release need not be held up simply to move the text of the license
from LICENSE to NOTICE or vice versa.
IMO, this is different from releases with category X dependencies, where ASF
policies are clear and conformance is very high among TLPs. I don't see that
the Incubator should consider this vote a precedent for overturning arbitrary
ASF policy.
If we don't like the poor state of ASF policy and conformance on
LICENSE/NOTICE then the ASF Membership should work to clarify the policy.
Marvin Humphrey
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