apache license 2.0 for consideration

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Russell Nelson said on Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 05:12:21PM -0500,:

 > If nobody else reviews this license, then the license approval
<snip>
 > comply with the OSD (cough, cough).  But still, could somebody else
 > take a gander at this?

This license was discussed on licenses at apache.org, and I had seen
quite a few regulars on this and debian-legal there; and in one mail,
Eben Moglen of FSF wrote:-

<quote>
    FSF notes  that section 5 is the  only element of ASL  2.0 that is
    incompatible  with version 2  of the  GNU General  Public License.
    FSF  continues to  believe that  the achievement  of compatibility
    between ASL and GPL would  be of enormous benefit to the community
    of  free software  developers,  allowing merger  of valuable  code
    bases  currently separated by  license incompatibilities.   FSF is
    pleased to note the convergence implied by the ASL 2.0 draft.  FSF
    will make efforts, in the development, discussion, and adoption of
    GPL  3  to  further  the  process  of  convergence,  by  carefully
    considering the Apache Foundation's approach to the patent defense
    problem.  For this reason, we consider the distinction between the
    approaches contained in the  first and second sentences of section
    5 to be particularly significant.
</quote>

Sec. 5 referred to by Prof.  Moglen was Sec 5 of the original draft as
proposed by the Apache Foundation.  This seems to have been renumbered
as section 3 in the final license.

Finally, on January 24th, Roy Fielding of the Apache Foundation stated
on the same list:-

<quote>
    They(*) are compatible.   Whether  or  not   they  are  considered
    compatible by the FSF is an  opinion only they can make, but given
    that a derivative work consisting of both Apache Licensed code and
    GPL  code can  be distributed  under the  GPL (according  to *our*
    opinion), there really isn't anything to be discussed.
</quote>

Guess that settles the matter.

I am not  on a `always on' network, so cannot  search out the archives
of  license at apache.org for  exact  links to  the  above messages;  the
messages are archived by  me though.

(*) The ASL and GNU GPL.

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  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
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