Answers inline, please be aware IANAL so these answers are no substitute for getting advice from a real lawyer
On 17/06/2015 17:12, "封仲淹(纪君祥)" <zhongyan.f...@alibaba-inc.com> wrote: >Hi > > > >May I ask several question about donating projects to Apache? > >Any help are appreciated. Thanks in advance. > >As we all know, the Apache is the most important open source community, >there are so many great projects such as Tomcat, Hadoop, Hbase, Zookeeper >etc. It is proud of joining these great projects. > >We also want to donate some of our good open source projects to ASF, but >we >are a litter worry about the legal issue. I don’t know what’s the impact >of intelligent Properties after donation, Could anyone give me some >guideline or several documents ? Thanks Firstly please note that the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) does not accept arbitrary donations, all incoming projects need to be go through the Incubation Process: http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Process_Description.html The first stage of which is starting a discussion on the general@incubator.apache.org list to discuss your proposed donations. A key criteria that the Incubator uses is that there must be a willingness to build a open community around a project. If your intent is merely to open source a project or leverage the Apache brand with your company retaining control then your project is unlikely to be accepted by the ASF and you may be better simply posting it on GitHub and having the discussion with the Incubator Community will help you figure out what the best path is for your projects. > > > >(1) Trademark > >Will the project trademark belong to ASF or still be our company’s after >donation? Can we still use the old project trademark. Trademarks would be transferred to ASF as part of the donation and become ASF trademarks, your company can use Apache trademarks in certain ways per the ASF trademarks policy: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/faq/ If you are currently marketing these products commercially then this would likely require some changes to how you market and brand your products. > > > > >(2) Patent > >We have own several patent on these open source projects, if we donate >these >project, what’s the patent going on. Does we give up all patent claim? No you don't give up the claims BUT per Clause 3. Grant of Patent License in the Apache License 2.0 contributors grant a license to all downstream users of the project to any applicable patents: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#patent > > > >(3) Agreement > >Which agreements should we sign? Right now, we need sign ><http://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-corporate.txt> Corporate CLA and ><http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt> Software Grant >Agreement >(SGA). Is there any other agreement should we sign? To donate a project then you would have to sign the SGA The Corporate CLA is an optional document typically used when you employ people who contribute to Apache projects and your companies IP policies would usually assign IP in any work employees do to the company > > > >(4) Who own the source code? > >Does the code belong to ASF or still be our company? > > The ASF owns the copyright for the collective work Individual contributors retain copyright to their individual contributions (note that contributions are not necessarily just code), through Clause 2 Grant of Copyright License of the Apache License 2.0 the contributors grant a copyright license to all downstream users of the code: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#copyright Hope this helps, Rob > > > > > >Thanks in advance. > >Longda > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
