Hello Oliver;
Thanks for working on this important issue, I surely welcome
fresh eyes on it.
On 03/23/12 06:47, Oliver-Rainer Wittmann wrote:
Hi,
...
Before starting to work on these files I had a look at the
corresponding Apache policies/rules/... regarding these files - [1],
[2], [3]
I have discovered [9] which more or less state that an entry into the
NOTICE file is mostly not needed and depends on the specific license
of the 3rd party component.
Having a look at the LICENSE and NOTICE file of Apache httpd project
seems to confirm this.
Pedro, do you consider [9] when you did your hard work on the NOTICE
file?
I surely missed it.
When I started to work on that there was a false premise that the
LICENSE file would only carry the AL2 (no finger pointing, but I know
*who* you are guys!), so the NOTICE file tried to cover some of that
information. Providing a link to thirdparty stuff is not always mandatory
but it was good to have a place to know what we use, and where to
get updates.
It is likely there is a lot of redundancy in both files now. The name of
where the stuff is used is not required in the LICENSE file, for example.
Also note there *is* an order: Firstly there are sections according to
the license category: this is good because we have many third party
libraries and we want to eventually replace of the category B stuff.
Secondly, the optional components (and fonts in particular) go last
in their corresponding section. Thirdly we do keep some alphabetical
order according to the associated module so that the NOTICE
and LICENSE files match.
Some remaining issues, out of the top of my head:
For everything under Category B, we have to include links to the
*sources*, and those can't really live in our tree: that is a problem
for seamonkey which is already so outdated it is not available
in the mozilla mirrors.
The OFL is not yet accepted. My suggestion is to turn all
fonts off by default in autoconf but enable them in the builds.
Cheers,
Pedro.
Mentors (and others too, of course), do you have certain advise what
kind of wordings in a license makes an entry in the NOTICE file
necessary?
[1] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
[2] http://apache.org/legal/resolved.html
[3] http://apache.org/dev/apply-license.html
[9] http://apache.org/legal/resolved.html#required-third-party-notices
Thanks in advance, Oliver.
