On Aug 26, 2008, at 9:29 AM, Kevin Jackson wrote:
> Hi,
>
>>> I'm not sure it should be an Apache project, because we can't
>>> distribute
>>> the binaries as Apache (which is what most people want)
>
> From my understanding of the way Apache works, only the src files
> constitute a 'release'. Many (if not most) Apache projects also
> supply a binary distribution (which also tends to be signed), but this
> is *not* the 'release'.
That's correct.
>> I'm not sure if there is an issue here. We certainly can't release
>> something
>> under anything other than the original license, but I don't see
>> how that
>> would be a problem since all licenses involved (as far as I can
>> tell) are
>> BSD-ish in nature.
>
> As far as I know, we don't release anything unless it's under the
> Apache License (2.0). Even if components are BSD-ish in nature I
> don't think we can host a bundle containing artefacts under different
> licenses within the Apache infrastructure (certainly not in the
> official svn).
Actually, this is not true. We are allowed to use external
components, licensed under different (yet compatible) licenses. Such
components can happily live in the ASF svn repo (see http://
svn.apache.org/repos/asf/cocoon/tags/cocoon-2.1/RELEASE_2_1_10/lib/
core/ for an example), even though as of recent we try to keep
external components to a minimum. AFAIK, two restrictions apply:
artifacts must be licensed in a compatible way to the AL (BSD is
fine), and the LEGAL/NOTICE stuff must be kept up to date. I would
reckon the following must apply if we want to distribute CouchDBX:
- any source file of CouchDBX proper must be AL licensed and properly
copyright-licensed (in a word, donated) to the ASF. This of course
means every committer will be free to work on that.
- external components must be compatible license-wise, and properly
accounted for in the repository
Ciao,
--
Gianugo Rabellino
Sourcesense - making sense of Open Source: http://www.sourcesense.com
Blogging at http://boldlyopen.com/
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