Leo Simons wrote:
On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 12:05:11PM -0800, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
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.
Or, potentially, the only one who has ever brought it up :-)
Fair enough.
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.
Hadn't actually thought of it in those terms just yet (and guessing at
other people's opinions is always hard), but yeah, I can very much
imagine things like that. Hmm.
How confident are you this is the first time the question has been asked?
I don't know of any other that asked (or noticed) such a thing. I was
quite intrigued by it myself as I never thought of such implications.
With my ASF hat on, I would say because it's so natural that we'll give
credit when due, that we didn't even think to specify it in such a
contract. But I did not write it nor I was part of its writing, so I
can't speak for them.
It, and its social and moral implications (and the same for the possible
answers) is in some ways quite intriguing...
Somebody once said that the main difference between the FSF and the ASF
philosophy is that the FSF considers a contractual obligation to give
back the code and a moral one to respect the brand while the ASF has a
contractual obligation to respect the brand and a moral one to give back
the code.
Both deeply believe in giving credits when due and before the Apache
License 2.0, it was a moral obligation.
The Apache License 2.0 somewhat makes it more contractual, with the
NOTICE file, but it's actually a byproduct, I don't think it was
intentional.
For example, we do not, ON PURPOSE, regulate at the ASF level the
@author tags: the granularity of credits giving is left unspecified and
it's something that each and every community might decide on their own,
just like day 2 day project operations.
I personally wouldn't have a problem if we modified the CLAs to say that
no matter what we'll keep credit when due, somewhere, somehow, around
the project, unless the author explicitly asks for it to be removed (I
did such a thing in JMeter and Ant, for example, because I was sick of
receiving requests for code that I wrote years ago and that I had
nothing to do with at this moment... the code was totally different but
my name was still in the @author tag).
That said, without a reason for this to change (as SableVM seems to be
easier to integrate as an external piece), it's unlikely that we'll do
it "just because", even if it makes sense.
--
Stefano.
