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Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:56:16 -0500
From: "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wrowe@rowe-clan.net>
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To: APR Development List <dev@apr.apache.org>
CC: Cliff Schmidt <cliffschmidt@gmail.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@apache.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] apr_threadpool
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Cliff Schmidt wrote:
>>
>> I don't know if there's anything specific Cliff would like to see with
>> respect to undoing an advertising request once posted.  Cliff?  Best way
>> to unencumber this, now?  (Note, code was originally submitted with Sun
>> Copyright notices.)
> 
> Maybe I'm missing some context, but I don't see what the problem is
> with allowing a contributor to have their copyright notice placed in
> the NOTICE file.  I'm familiar with the history behind the BSD
> advertising clause issue, but that was not about copyright notices.
> What am I missing?

Fair Question.  (Keeping non-list folks Cliff & Sam on the cc:)

The APR Project has a strong history of vendor neutrality - which stems
from a almost vendor neutral approach at the HTTPD project.  (Yes, httpd
has some vendor copyright notices, and included alot more pre-Apache
legacy code).  The ASF publishes the following NOTICES;

http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/apr/apr/trunk/NOTICE
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/apr/apr-util/trunk/NOTICE

for the core code of apr and apr-util.  There are other nested NOTICES
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/apr/apr-util/trunk/xml/expat/COPYING
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/apr/apr-iconv/trunk/COPYING for bundled
expat or iconv when they are incorporated, as they are third party
dependencies we've shipped in the past.  (This is just as likely to be
changed to external dependencies we -don't- bundle in the future.)

There is -no- question there are non-ASF copyrights held by Covalent,
IBM, Novell, RedHat, Apple and more, or their employees as applicable,
as well as another dozen regular APR contributors.  We are all clear
on this, and that these modules to major fragments of the system are
only copyright the ASF as a collective work.

If you see the NOTICE file, you will see that collective copyright,
alone, with only the exceptions for code that was created prior to the
creation of the APR project.

As a matter of project policy, one can imagine the disgust with which
most of the major contributors would accept a major copyright notice
for the contributor of a single component in NOTICE.  It certainly
breaks the cooperative spirit of the project, and would therefore
become filled quickly with the major contributors to APR (which are
many).

We cannot -not- publish the copyright notice when requested by any of
the contributors, that's clear in the ASL.  But once we've done so, we
begin the race to publish copyrights by all of the previous contributors.
Is that healthy for the project?  I have no issue placing the first major
contributor at the head of those NOTICE files, and perhaps my boss would
even enjoy the publicity(!)  But we've played on a Vendor neutral field
for five years and certainly would continue to if that remains the
consensus of the project.

So here's my question to Sam and Cliff;

  if we retain the vendor neutral nature of APR, what's needed from Sun
  or Henri to make clear this code can be added without the copyright
  notice advertisement?

or, to the project;

  do we want to change the very nature of collecting individual copyright
  statements in NOTICE from all major contributors?  Do we believe this
  would encourage other worthwhile contributions?

My personal opinion is that APR should retain it's vendor neutrality,
especially because any change might further incur in a change at HTTPD,
but of course I would follow the consensus of the project.  And as an
employee I might have yet another opinion, but I'm speaking strictly for
the health of the APR project.

I hope I've stated the issue clearly, please correct any mistakes.  Garrett
did a nice job of stating all this in many fewer words :)

Bill