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Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:09:02 -0700
Message-ID: 
 <CAAS6=7i-NPft6ZsuFQc-rL=JDnxdybc+EV6YHUZbpAsGrTVRbg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: ICLA US Government
From: Marvin Humphrey <marvin@rectangular.com>
To: "legal-discuss@apache.org" <legal-discuss@apache.org>
Cc: private@commons.apache.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Evan Ward <evan.ward@nrl.navy.mil> wrote:
> The right to use my contributions without fear of lawsuits is all that
> Apache really wants.

It is not enough to incorporate your contributions.  They must also be usable
by downstream consumers.

There are seemingly innumerable legal departments out there with one objection
or another to the iCLA and who wish to amend it, but iCLA proliferation
presents similar problems to license proliferation -- the problem is not just
your case, it's your case and all the other cases like yours.  Taken together,
all the different conditions under which Apache might incorporate contributions
would make understanding the legal state of the combined work we steward
expensive at first and eventually impossible.

> [1] http://www.ieee.org/documents/IEEECForm121302pdf_1.pdf
> [2] http://cendi.dtic.mil/publications/04-8copyright.html#326

Both of these resources deal with copyright _assignment_.  You can't transfer
copyright to another party -- thereby enabling that party to start restricting
usage by others -- when you don't have it to begin with.

However, the iCLA does not require copyright assignment.

Marvin Humphrey

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