[License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

[Jim Jagielski]

(dropping members@)

As Larry noted, the ASF board makes a distinction between what is
legally possible, and what our policy is. The rationale behind
that policy can easily be found. Larry's proposal would be a major
policy change for the ASF and, we (the ASF) are confident, would
cause major discussion and disruption and confusion to our end-users,
who now, for valid reasons, consider ASF code as "safe" and "brain-dead
easy" to consume and leverage.

> On May 26, 2015, at 10:16 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> 
> [This has been a hellishly long thread on private Apache lists before the board cut off discussion on revised policies. Below was the short start of it I submitted over two weeks ago. Apache board members don't want to revise current policy. Many Apache members don't want it. Still, it is a serious proposal to bring some more freedom and cooperation to open source. Please treat this as a political document for license-discuss at . /Larry]
>  
> **********************
>  
> DRAFT: Apache Third Party License Policy (May 10, 2015)
>  
> Apache projects have long been universal donors to many other software projects around the world. We are proud of that. We intend to continue that tradition by requiring that all software aggregations distributed by Apache Software Foundation will be licensed to the public under the Apache License 2.0. This means that all of our licensees around the world are free to:
>  
> ·       Use Apache software for any purpose.
> ·       Make and distribute copies.
> ·       Create and distribute derivative works.
> ·       Access and use the source code.
> ·       Combine Apache and other software.
>  
> In order to foster our Foundation community ethic to ensure the widest free participation in the open source software community, Apache has now decided to become also a universal acceptor of other open source software licensed to us from around the world. 
>  
> When technically appropriate for that software in the judgment of the PMC, Apache projects may accept contributions under ANY OSI-approved open source license. Such software may now be included in Apache aggregations that, as described above, will be licensed to the public under Apache License 2.0.
>  
> Because Apache projects may now incorporate third party open source software into our software aggregations, we have added the following procedures for Apache software releases:
>  
> ·       Because all Apache project contributions will be licensed to Apache under an OSI-approved open source license, the above list of five fundamental software freedoms continues to apply to all Apache software. Downstream users and re-distributors of Apache software can continue to incorporate all of our open source software into their own products unmodified without incurring any special derivative work reciprocity obligations.
>  
> ·       All releases containing any non-Apache open source licensed contributions will be explicitly identified in a NOTICE file that our projects will create. The PMC is responsible to ensure that the text in the NOTICE file expressly satisfies the notice and disclosure requirements of all relevant contribution licenses.
>  
> ·       Modifiers and re-distributors of Apache software will now need to read the NOTICE files to determine whether they have any derivative work reciprocity requirements for specific contributions. 
>  
> You may influence the inclusion or exclusion of specific third party contributions under OSI-approved licenses by joining the Apache project. All such decisions are made by Apache projects in public.
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