Thanks for the detailed review Larry. We are now back where we started with this question after you originally mentioned it on licensing. That is, we are faced with a social issue in that contributors want to contribute to the Apache Software Foundation, not to various named for-profit corporations, and thus get rather upset when our copyright is not at the top of the file regardless of the precise legal meaning of the notices.
This social issue is why I argued for changing the contributor license (or at least one variant of the contributor license) to be a true copyright assignment. I am one of those people who have the legal right to assign copyright to the ASF, since I arranged that as part of my employment agreements. Am I correct in assuming that if the ASF had a standard copyright assignment form and I signed it for those works I created, then the ASF copyright could be placed on those works in place of my own?
Likewise, I believe that if the ASF wishes to place its copyright on the top of works contributed to form a new project, then a copyright assignment from the original owner will be necessary.
[Note, I am not asking whether we *should* require such a thing, since that is a decision the members or board should make after considering our input.]
A second issue is whether we need to fix the notices on our current files, or if it is sufficient to set the policy now and only apply it to future contributions. I am unsure what the downside is for illegitimate notices (i.e., if there is some liability to the ASF if we leave them as is when the actual copyright owner doesn't care).
Thanks again,
....Roy
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