(dropping members@) As Larry noted, the ASF board makes a distinction between what is legally possible, and what our policy is. The rationale behind that policy can easily be found. Larry's proposal would be a major policy change for the ASF and, we (the ASF) are confident, would cause major discussion and disruption and confusion to our end-users, who now, for valid reasons, consider ASF code as "safe" and "brain-dead easy" to consume and leverage.
> On May 26, 2015, at 10:16 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lro...@rosenlaw.com> wrote: > > [This has been a hellishly long thread on private Apache lists before the > board cut off discussion on revised policies. Below was the short start of it > I submitted over two weeks ago. Apache board members don't want to revise > current policy. Many Apache members don't want it. Still, it is a serious > proposal to bring some more freedom and cooperation to open source. Please > treat this as a political document for license-discuss@. /Larry] > > ********************** > > DRAFT: Apache Third Party License Policy (May 10, 2015) > > Apache projects have long been universal donors to many other software > projects around the world. We are proud of that. We intend to continue that > tradition by requiring that all software aggregations distributed by Apache > Software Foundation will be licensed to the public under the Apache License > 2.0. This means that all of our licensees around the world are free to: > > · Use Apache software for any purpose. > · Make and distribute copies. > · Create and distribute derivative works. > · Access and use the source code. > · Combine Apache and other software. > > In order to foster our Foundation community ethic to ensure the widest free > participation in the open source software community, Apache has now decided > to become also a universal acceptor of other open source software licensed to > us from around the world. > > When technically appropriate for that software in the judgment of the PMC, > Apache projects may accept contributions under ANY OSI-approved open source > license. Such software may now be included in Apache aggregations that, as > described above, will be licensed to the public under Apache License 2.0. > > Because Apache projects may now incorporate third party open source software > into our software aggregations, we have added the following procedures for > Apache software releases: > > · Because all Apache project contributions will be licensed to Apache > under an OSI-approved open source license, the above list of five fundamental > software freedoms continues to apply to all Apache software. Downstream users > and re-distributors of Apache software can continue to incorporate all of our > open source software into their own products unmodified without incurring any > special derivative work reciprocity obligations. > > · All releases containing any non-Apache open source licensed > contributions will be explicitly identified in a NOTICE file that our > projects will create. The PMC is responsible to ensure that the text in the > NOTICE file expressly satisfies the notice and disclosure requirements of all > relevant contribution licenses. > > · Modifiers and re-distributors of Apache software will now need to > read the NOTICE files to determine whether they have any derivative work > reciprocity requirements for specific contributions. > > You may influence the inclusion or exclusion of specific third party > contributions under OSI-approved licenses by joining the Apache project. All > such decisions are made by Apache projects in public. > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@opensource.org > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
