Mailing-List: contact harmony-dev-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (asf.osuosl.org: local policy)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:47:16 -0800
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [jchevm] JCHEVM discussion]
Message-ID: <20060313204716.GA16042@pogo.kaffe.org>
References: <4414AEB7.30605@sablevm.org> <4414C273.4080006@pobox.com>
 <4414EAB8.3040709@sablevm.org>
 <20060313170449.GC67809@bali.sjc.webweaving.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <20060313170449.GC67809@bali.sjc.webweaving.org>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i
From: Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org>

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 09:04:49AM -0800, Leo Simons wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am not a laywer. I don't play one on TV, though I've played one on
> stage a few weeks ago.
> 
> If I understand correctly, determining whether codebase A is a derivative
> work of codebase B is somewhat hard work. We have a codebase B in the
> Harmony tree and a contributor to codebase A asserting that codebase B is
> a derivative of codebase A, with codebase A under a
> non-apache-license-compatible license.
> 
> We have therefore closed off all access to codebase B but have not verified
> this assertion. There is some history here with codebase A and B which is
> becoming clearer through mailing list discussion.
> 
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 10:44:56PM -0500, Etienne Gagnon wrote:
> > See below.
> > 
> > >> So, if the Harmony project has no problem acknowledging the shared
> > >> Copyright of SableVM authors on JCHEVM, I will get in touch with these
> > >> authors to get their consent to a license change.
> > > 
> > > That's excellent!  I see no problem with that.  We traditionally give
> > > credit where credit is due for anything we redistribute.
> > 
> > Great!  Then I'll get on with that task.  Please understand, though,
> > that it might take one or two weeks to resolve (hoping I am not too
> > optimistic).  Some copyright holders might be difficult to reach.  I
> > will do it as fast as I can.
> 
> Do I understand correctly that rather than go through the motions of
> actually having to go through the painful route of proving or disproving
> this derivative work assertion, we are going to try and make codebase A a
> contribution under an apache-license-compatible license?
> 
> I must say it sounds very tempting (I really don't want us to waste time
> and energy on (dis)proving something if we don't have to. Writing code
> is just much more fun) but I don't fully understand if this is enough
> "due dilligence" on the ASF side. Can we leave this infringement claim
> "hanging around" and just jump to "fixing the problem even if it might
> not actually be one, since it has some nice side effects"?

As far as I parse the discussion, Etienne agrees to do the necessary work 
to contribute his & his codevelopers' codebase to us, so I believe the 
simplest "due dilligence" solution for the ASF would be for the 
infringement claim to be withdrawn, so that codebase B can be unblocked 
now, while the paperwork on codebase A is being finished.

Alternatively, we could also keep codebase B locked down until we have
the paperwork for the codebase A submission, which would also be simple,
but not my favourite choice.

Finally, we could do the painful thing, but I am sure nobody needs that.

cheers,
dalibor topic

> 
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> Leo