Hi Curt, I've already replied to your "Dependencies in SVN" thread in more depth on couchdb-dev@ [1] so I'll only repeat the essentials here. To summarise: Niclas is correct in that there is no problem with bundling third-party dependencies with an ASF project as long as their licenses are all ASL-compatible. I have authoritative comments on this from legal-discuss@ and it has been added to the ASF Legal "Previously Asked Questions" page: http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html (although it may take a while before it synchronises from SVN). If you have any further questions about this please bring it up on the couchdb-dev@ mailing list, or if you need further clarification about legal matters, please bring it up on legal-discuss@ as suggested below. [1]: http://markmail.org/message/lxxb6cfpq7rhc2sl Thanks, -- Jason Davies www.jasondavies.com On 9 Aug 2009, at 11:54, Niclas Hedhman wrote: > Curt, > Two things come to my mind immediately, and this is without reading > your > references (might do that when I'm back at a computer). > > 1. CouchDb graduated long ago, and is no longer the concern of the > Incubator > in particular. If you have legal concerns that the CouchDb doesn't > want to > address, I suggest you seek further info from legal-discuss, and if > it isn't > of legal nature, go to the Board or Membership with the concerns... > > 2. Speaking from a legal perspective, there is nothing "at Apache" > that > prevents people for doing source code copy, in small or large (a.k.a > forks), > PROVIDED that the license allows it. I saw you mentioning BSD > (modified I > hope) and MIT X, and those licenses require attribution and few other > things, so if that is done, there is no legal contention here. Now > you said > that Apache doesn't fork... well the reason behind that (I think) is > that we > are all lazy, it takes a lot of energy to maintain forks. And we > don't do it > to compete with the original project, out of courtesy... is that your > complaint? > > I appreciate your concerns, just target the right audience and > preferably > with the invitation of the CouchDb PMC... > > -- Niclas > > On Aug 9, 2009 5:48 PM, "Curt Arnold" wrote: > > I've been using CouchDB in my personal development and have recently > started > trying to get up to speed with the project itself. I've brought up > a few > issues on dev@couchdb.apache.org where I encountered things that > were a bit > unsettling. There has been follow up discussion, but no resolution > and no > one who can speak authoritatively on where the line is on certain > issues. > > A recent patch introduced the source code of a BSD-licensed project > (erlang_oauth) into the CouchDB SVN. There was no mention of the > addition > of the dependency in the patch and the license file for the project > was not > included (which required including the license and disclaimers). > Digging a > little more, I found that another non-ASL code base (ibrowse) was > added to > the SVN in January, again with missing license, no notice in the > submission, > traffic in the mailing list. There is a third code base (mochiweb) > that was > in the source during incubation which was noted in the April 2008 > board > report: > > > On Apr 14, 2008, at 11:07 AM, Noel J. Bergman wrote: > .... > > >> >> === CouchDB === >> >> CouchDB is a distributed document-oriented database system written in >> Erlang. The project entered incubation on February 12th, 2008. >> >> The infrastructure (SVN, JIRA, mailing lists, and web-site) has >> been set >> up, >> and the team has moved source, documentation, and bug reports from >> their >> former homes to the ASF. >> >> Work has continued on removing code forked from other projects from >> the >> CouchDB codebase. This includes Mozilla !SpiderMonkey, the code for >> which >> was previously included with CouchDB in slightly modified form. >> Instead, it >> is now treated as an external compile-time dependency via a custom C >> wrapper >> using the !SpiderMonkey API. Also, work is currently in progress on >> replacing the dependency on a forked version of `inets`, which is >> part of >> the Erlang standard library (EPL), with the MIT-licensed !MochiWeb >> library. >> For the time being, the !MochiWeb code is included in the CouchDB >> codebase, >> mostly because there has been no official release of that library >> yet. >> >> > That point indicated that the direction was to remove external > codebases > from the CouchDB source tree. The mochiweb and ibrowse have slightly > diverged from the base project, so in essence (but not likely in > intent) > CouchDB has forked those projects. > > I requested that the erlang_oauth commit be reverted until we had a > clarification, but no action has been taken. > > The second issue is that there seemed to be a recurring pattern of > significant contributors using Github for feature branches. This > raised the > possibility of the resulting patch not being the work of a single > individual > and also removed the development history from the archives. > > > I reported these issues in the following threads: > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/200908.mbox/%3c8F366A4D-A8D0-44D1-A9D2-4F067F386045@apache.org%3e > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/200908.mbox/%3c98E3034D-2595-4FBE-AE6E-991AFFA64CB3@apache.org%3e > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/200908.mbox/%3c29420CCA-62BF-424E-A03D-6B376A0D91FF@apache.org%3e > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/200908.mbox/%3c399A2534-FBBB-4D0E-A7C9-A04AB0E175BA@apache.org%3e > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/200908.mbox/%3c00D13141-2CEE-42B2-87CE-81FBA695E36C@apache.org%3e > > > The current question is: > On Aug 8, 2009, at 1:39 PM, Paul Davis wrote: > > .. > >> >> Maybe its just me but I haven't the slightest what problem this >> thread >> is trying to solve. Why would we even think about removing our >> runtime >> dependencies from SVN? I know someone suggested it in thread this >> conversation forked from but I never read discussion about why this >> would be good or necessary. >> >> > I'm having problems pointing to a definitive statement that says > that these > are things that an Apache project doesn't do, but am struggling to > come up > with anything definitive. > > I would appreciate review of these threads and appropriate > participation > from the Incubator PMC. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org