Greets,
We need to work out a formal plan for the code import. Primary guidance is
located here:
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/mentor.html#initial-ip-clearance
I asked about examples we might reference on [email protected] a few days
ago, but nobody replied (<http://markmail.org/message/xbs24zrhrio76lgl>), so
we'll just have to follow the instructions as best we can.
I have assembled a list of individuals who have made significant contributions
to KinoSearch and thus must participate in the software grant. All of them
have been contacted privately and expressed their preliminary approval.
I have also been accumulating a list of people who have made small
contributions, which while welcome, may not be significant for the purposes of
the grant. For these individuals, I think we should have them write to
lucy-dev indicating whether they agree with that assessment and whether they
think they need to participate formally. This is what I see that mod_fcgid
did:
http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/httpd-mod_fcgid.html
There are also people in the KinoSearch svn logs who are credited for having
identified bugs or provided ideas, but who did not supply patches or whose
patches were not incorporated into the code base. I don't think we need to
contact these individuals, but we should clarify the status of these commit
messages.
To track all of these issues, I think we should open a JIRA issue entitled
"Software Grant Participants".
Another task that needs to be completed before the code drop is the excising
of materials which cannot be relicensed. For example, the standalone utility
script trunk/devel/bin/dump_index was adapted by Brian Phillips from an
original which was published in the Plucene distribution; it will simply not
be included in the grant.
Lastly, all references to the current GPL/Artistic licensing need to be
excised. My current thought is to remove the licensing information but leave
the copyright notices with my name in place as sort of a "todo" tag.
The result of this process will be a clean tarball that can be unpacked and
committed to an "import" directory in one fell swoop. Then we can proceed by
through the codebase file by file, removing my copyright, moving other
copyright and license notifications to LICENCE and NOTICE, and adding the ASF
headers.
http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
I am currently reviewing the KinoSearch commit history commit by commit
looking for IP issues and assembling an authoritative list of contributors.
This is laborious, but it is important work; the audit has yielded one
additional name for the software grant participant list (see LUCENE-675,
<http://s.apache.org/HTJ>). I think it will take me another week or two to
complete my review. Once that's done, I'll branch and tag the KinoSearch
repository and prepare the grant tarball and checksum.
It would be nice to begin contacting our small contributors now; if one of
them decides that they need to participate in the formal grant, we need to
know that before we prepare the paperwork. For what it's worth, the
possibility exists that I will identify other contributions during the audit
that were missed during the initial scan, but I don't think we should wait, as
that would hold up the assembly of the grant paperwork (which is supposed to
include all names).
http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/index.html#notes
The alternative is that each party sign its own software grant while
everyone references the same contribution (designated by a URL and an MD5
hash over the ZIP file representing the contribution). It is recommended
that the software grant form is modified in order to have a line for each
party so the completeness of the paperwork can be verified upon receipt.
I'm thinking that I should send a private mail to each of the small
contributors like the following.
Greetings [name of valued contributor],
The KinoSearch project is being assimilated by Apache Lucy
(<http://incubator.apache.org/lucy>), and we are in the midst of preparing
the formal software grant to relicense the code base to the Apache
Software Foundation. We need all significant past contributors to
KinoSearch to particpate in this grant.
So far, we have identified only the contributions below from you:
[link to JIRA comment]
While valuable to the project, the sum total of them may not be
significant for the purposes of copyright. If you agree with that
assessment, it is not necessary for you to participate in the formal
grant; however, we would like to have a public record of your agreement so
that we may use your code freely. Therefore, we would appreciate it if
you would send a message to the public mailing list lucy-dev@
with the following text:
I agree that I do not consider the sum total of the contributions at
[link to JIRA comment] significant for the purposes of the KinoSearch
software grant.
If you have any questions or concerns, please drop a line to lucy-...@.
Thanks for your past contributions,
Marvin Humphrey
(I'll expand lucy-dev@ in the actual mails, of course.)
Sound good?
Alternatively, we could just list everyone in the grant paperwork, no matter
how small the patch. But then if it takes a while to contact someone, I'm not
sure where that leaves us.
Marvin Humphrey
