I'm not on the legal affairs committee, the board or the logging PMC so my opinion here is just that.
I haven't looked recently at how prudent mode is implemented (although my experience with file system locking tells me that no matter how good it is it will fail on some systems) or what was done to implement it in log4j. It doesn't really matter. As I understand it Ceki is still on the logging PMC. Although he didn't explicitly state it, I take his statement below as a veto. http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html clearly indicates that the code needs to be removed until the veto is resolved. I would also suggest that Ceki needs to be careful in not vetoing things simply because they are already in Logback as there is a potential conflict of interest here. If Curt's account is indeed true then I'm not convinced he did anything wrong, although a review of the code might persuade me. There is nothing necessarily wrong with looking at some code, learning something from it, and then writing code independently, but you can't just take the code and modify it a bit. The difficult part with this is that if the code in question is small and there are a limited number of ways of doing something then everything might look like a copyright violation even if it isn't. Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement, provides a good discussion of the issue. Again though, given Apache's rules on vetoing I don't think all this even matters in this case. Somehow the code needs to be reverted and then reimplemented. Curt's analysis in the Jira issue, and even providing more detail about what nio methods to use, would easily be sufficient to insure that there is no copyright problem. I am also concerned by Ceki's observation that there are insufficient tests in log4j to test the added feature, not from a copyright point of view but as a general rule. How do you know the code in question even works? If I was on the PMC I would veto a code commit of a new feature that had no tests. Ralph On Feb 14, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Ceki Gülcü wrote: > > You picked the wrong logback feature to rip off. > > You can persists in denying the obvious or come to your senses. I > suggest you privately contact the board or maybe Ralph Goers who is > quite knowledgeable about these matters to get counseling about the > seriousness of your predicament. You are also in violation of sections > 4 and 5 of the ICLA document you signed as an Apache committer. The > Apache foundation is unlikely to condone your personal copyright > infringement implicating the foundation. > > Before this matter gets out of hand with regrettable consequences, I > expect you to: > > 1) immediately revert commit 909868 > > 2) post a public apology to this list and promise to refrain from > similar copyright infringement in the future. > > -- > Ceki Gülcü > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: log4j-dev-unsubscr...@logging.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: log4j-dev-h...@logging.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: log4j-dev-unsubscr...@logging.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: log4j-dev-h...@logging.apache.org
