Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
Dalibor Topic wrote:
Leo Simons wrote:
, that that can
lead to no end of confusion over the actual license of a VM using
modules from Harmony, if the SableVM developer believes to have a
say in
it.
No I would say that it cannot, since that sablevm developer would at
a minimum
have licensed the software under the apache license to apache, and
then apache
would have licensed that software to the end user under the apache
license, and
what that means is rather clear.
It's not clear at all to me from reading the ASL2, so let's spell it
out: Would such a hypothetical developer have a say in the license of
a VM using Harmony's modules or not? Cliff?
No.
I thought about this for a second more - the apache license is a license
from each contributor of their contribution to the licensee, so I would
guess that yes, any contributor could hypothetically have a say on what
a licensee does w/in the boundaries of their contribution.
no, hold it, this is not true. Once you give a perpetual license, you
can't revoke it. If you own some code, you can relicense it under
different conditions, but since the license that you had before was a
OSI license it gives other the ability to fork.
I dunno. I am not a lawyer, and I'm really tired :)
The ability to fork is what saves users from copyright holders going
wacko and changing the license in 'less then open source'.
Which means that you might own some code, but you don't own its usage
dynamics once you enter an OSI/free-software licensing scheme.
If not, hell, it would be a perpetual lock-in situation.
So, in short:
1) the ASF is not asking for copyright transfer, so "submarine
copyright holders" are all over the place (I'm one too, I own code in so
many java projects I can't even count them, and I wasn't working for
anybody so that is definitely my code).
2) not having ownership simplifies donations and guarantees the
ability for the author to do whatever he/she pleases with the code even
after it was donated.
3) not having ownership does not effect the ability for the ASF to
create successful and perpetual open development efforts around such
code. The owner cannot stop the ASF from continuing the effort unless it
violates the contract that was signed with the CLA. Given the broad
spectrum of rights that the CLA gives to the ASF.
4) copyright statements and giving credits are two different things
and I think it's wise to keep them separate.
5) the ASF considers it a moral obligation to give credit when due,
not a contractual one. In 10 years, Etienne is the only one who had a
problem with this. It is reasonable for him to ask for such an
obligation to be contractual and not just moral, yet it is also
reasonable (and predictable) for some ASF members to feel insulted by
such a request.
--
Stefano.
