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Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 16:57:16 +0000
From: Steve Loughran <steve_l@iseran.com>
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To: axis-dev@ws.apache.org
Subject: Re: IPR for contributions to Axis
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Tom Oinn wrote:
> Hi Darren,
> 
> Seeing as Axis uses libraries (in particular Java Mail and a few others) 
> that don't have this property, couldn't you contribute in this fashion? 
> I just poked around the license terms - as you know I am not a lawyer - 
> and it's certainly implied that copyright is passed on to the foundation 
> rather than the individual person or organisation that commited it. I 
> couldn't find a clear statement on the website but perhaps I was looking 
> in the wrong places.


for code to go into the axis codebase, you have to give Apache the 
rights to it. If you have issues with management about this, point out 
that you gain access to code written by many people, including IBM, 
Macromedia and any others.

If your company doesnt relinquish the rights, they can retain ownership 
by keeping the source private. Only then they have to keep the source up 
to date and deal with the problem of what to do when Axis adds SAAJ1.2 
itself -as this will be someone else's implementation.

Too often people (esp lawyers) think code contains valuable 
"intellectual property". But by and large, all it contains is 
engineering effort that can de duplicated at will. The only area that I 
have ever come across 'trade secrets' in code are related to algorithms 
for rendering fonts and the like -and even then the Linux graphics 
libraries (both X11 and inkjet) are up to par with the 'secret' algorithms.