Mailing-List: contact general-help@portals.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: "Portals Discussion" <general@portals.apache.org>
Received-SPF: neutral (athena.apache.org: local policy)
Message-ID: <4901A3A6.9020603@douma.nu>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:29:58 +0200
From: Ate Douma <ate@douma.nu>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (X11/20080925)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: general@incubator.apache.org
CC: Portals Discussion <general@portals.apache.org>
Subject: Re: What's up with WSRP4J?
References: <f767f0600810221308g1793ceeerc3d7a9d032e6d9c@mail.gmail.com>
	 <4900360E.3070904@apache.org>
 <49008219.30209@dslextreme.com>	 <9D4E099A-C2F8-4F71-9BAA-E3B8A5D05775@bluesunrise.com>
	 <4900F269.7090606@douma.nu>
 <f767f0600810240010g66531646kc396740a63526a05@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <f767f0600810240010g66531646kc396740a63526a05@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
> Hi Ate,
> 
> Thanks very much for your detailed reply. I'll comment on what's
> specific to the incubating status.
> 
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Ate Douma <ate@douma.nu> wrote:
> 
>> ...The problem of course is that WSRP4J still is in incubation and to be honest
>> hasn't seem much activities for some years now.
>> Part of the reason in my view (and possibly a big one) is the *still* fuzzy
>> state of potential patent claims on WSRP 1.0....
> 
> Does that patent issue mean that an ASF release of the WSRP4J would
> not be safe from a legal point of view?
> 
> Or is it just that users might be afraid of using it?
The patent claim (as it stands right now, but: IANAL) seems to require for any usage an *individual* license, e.g. there is no waver
(yet) for the ASF to allow release and distribution without putting this burden onto the end users again.
In my view, this would not be in compliance with the ASF license and thus a blocker for an ASF endorsed release.

Now, end users might or might now be afraid to use it.
Its (again in my view, and again: IANAL) questionable to say the least if there would ever be a claim by this one patent holder, but legally
it is unclear if/how we can make sure (so nor can the end-users) without having this go to court at least once or get this waver from the
acclaimed patent holder.

> 
>> ...We are in a kind of limbo here though: without proper developer and
>> community support how can it ever get out of incubator?...
> 
> Assuming the legal issue can be worked out, would the portals PMC be
> prepared to "adopt" the WSRP4J code and maintain it in the future?
Definitely, and we already did (for as much as possible)!
AFAIK The Portal PMC accepted long time ago to do so. This was before I became member though and I haven't be able to find concrete 
references in the mail archives for this.
But the Portals PMC has taken responsibility for reporting WSRP4J status to the board, the code-base is hosted underneath the portals root 
folder in svn and the project website is also hosted under portals.apache.org.

Note: possibly part of the reason the WSRP4J status reports have not always been delivered is that the separate incubator status reports
are not in schedule with the separate Portals status report, and of course that there hasn't been much to report either.
But when it was, the *Portals* status reports also included the needed information to the board AFAIK.

> 
>> ...If we can get a resolution on these legal issues soon, the state of the
>> project could be improved a lot in a short time (its not *that* big a
>> project to be honest), which I think then definitely will result in a much
>> more interested and growing community (there is a large group of silent
>> subscribers to the wsrp4j lists)....
> 
> Do you have pointers to discussions on our legal lists (Message-Id
> would do), so that interested people can get more details?
As this was mostly done on legal-internal@, only people *really* interested and willing to help out might have/request access to this
restricted list (there can be potential legally implicating information so this is not for just casual access).

@Bertrand:
   MessageID: <47C41592.9050806@douma.nu> is the starting point of a thread of currently 26 messages started early this year.

David Taylor and myself got stuck again on this after a few months, because we are unclear how to proceed and severe lack of time too.
It would be great if we can solicit some additional help with this as we definitely would like to resolve this once and for all (no matter 
the outcome).

Both David and myself will be at the ApacheCon so maybe we can setup a meeting then to discuss what can/needs to be done?

Regards,

Ate

> 
> -Bertrand
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org
> 
>