<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>I'm writing to request approval of the Educational Community License 2.0. ECL 2.0 is intended to replace ECL 1.0 (<A href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl1.php">http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl1.php</A>) and it is closely modeled after the Apache 2.0 license in an effort to reduce the burdens of license proliferation. Our eventual goal is to adopt the Apache 2.0 license itself, however we cannot adopt the Apache 2.0 license in its current version because the colleges and universities that are the primary contributors to our projects face restrictions on their ability to grant patent licenses that are incompatible with the current version of the Apache license. ECL 2.0 is intended to make as few changes to the Apache license as possible, while remedying this incompatibility.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>A little background...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I'm making this request on behalf of a number of large open source communities that are developing open source applications for education, primarily colleges and universities. ECL 1.0 is presently used by the Sakai Foundation (<A href="http://www.sakaiproject.org">www.sakaiproject.org</A>), the Kuali Foundation (<A href="http://www.kuali.org">www.kuali.org</A>), and a number of smaller open source projects within the higher education community.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The Sakai and Kuali Foundations are not-for-profit organizations modeled after the Apache Foundation and dedicated to coordinating community activities and safeguarding the community's intellectual property. The Sakai Foundation is developing enterprise collaboration and learning software and has more than 100 institutional members from around the world. The Kuali Foundation is developing a number of ERP-type applications for colleges and universities in areas such as Financials, Endowment Management, Research Administration, and Student Services.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Over the past few years, we have developed an IP management practice modeled after Apache's. We use inbound licenses modeled after the Apache's Contributor License Agreements. We also have a rigorous evaluation process for third party software that is proposed for inclusion in our distribution as part of our QA process, and we supplement this with periodic third party reviews using outside consultants / software tools and counsel. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>As part of this process, we have attempted to adopt the form of contribution agreement used by Apache for use in connection with contributions by educational institutions. We wanted to use the Apache form of contribution agreement so that we could eventually move away from ECL 1.0 and move towards adoption of the Apache form of open source license. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>In the process, however, we discovered an incompatibility between the patent clause in the Apache license and the rules that these educational institutions must follow. The incompatability has two features: First, while these educational institutions want to encourage contributions to these projects because they have the potential to be of enormous benefit to the entire higher education community, many research institutions simply do not have the ability to grant a patent license that will cover not only inventions by the individual faculty who are contributing to these projects, but also faculty and staff that have no involvement with the projects. In this regard, they are unlike a corporation that might wish to contribute to an open source project, where the corporation will typically control the patents that may be embodied in their contribution under relevant employment agreements. Second, in many cases these universities are subject to pre-existing research and grant funding agreements that limit their ability to grant patent licenses.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The need to evolve ECL 1.0</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>In November we held an international licensing summit among our community with the goal of developing a common licensing framework that would serve to minimize the friction of licensing when contributing to and adopting open source software among colleges and universities. See <A href="http://summit2006.osnext.org">http://summit2006.osnext.org</A>. One key outcome of the summit was the decision to try to move towards adoption of the Apache 2.0 form of outbound license. This was favored for a number of reasons:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>1. It is a popular license and therefore would likely be accepted more readily</DIV><DIV>2. Adopting the Apache license would help with license proliferation</DIV><DIV>3. It includes a patent license</DIV><DIV>4. It would create a high degree of inbound/outbound licensing symmetry with our contribution agreements.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Unfortunately, adopting the Apache license outright isn't an immediate option for our community, because of the patent-related issues described above. Adopting the Apache 2.0 form of outbound license would break the symmetry between the inbound contribution agreements that our participating institutions are able to provide, we obviously cannot make claims in the outbound license that are not supported by the inbound contribution agreements. In response, we decided that ECL 2.0 should be a clone of Apache with minimal changes to achieve inbound/outbound license symmetry. This is what we are submitting for approval today.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I'll wrap up my rationale for our approach, and for approval with the following considerations:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>1. As far as we know, ECL 1.0 is in use only within our community. We have a very cohesive community and will endeavor to eliminate the use of ECL 1.0 if ECL 2.0 is approved. This could be achieved in as little as 6 months.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>2. Our ultimate goal is to move to one of the popular licenses altogether and eliminate ECL. This will take some time, but a representative of Apache participated in our licensing summmit in November, and we hope to continue our dialogue with the Apache Foundation about the issues colleges and universities face in trying to use the current Apache licenses. We're hopeful that over some period of time, our community will bend a little, and the Apache license will evolve so that our community and the license converge. At this point we would do our best to retire ECL 2 altogether.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>3. We cannot move to Apache 2.0 immediately due to the importance of contributor license agreements, the limitations on the claims universities are able to make in those CLAs, and the asymmetry created if our outbound license has claims more broad than our inbound licenses.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Text version of ECL 2:</DIV><DIV><A href="https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ecl2.txt">https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ecl2.txt</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Formatted version:</DIV><DIV><A href="https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ECL2.0.doc">https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ECL2.0.doc</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>or</DIV><DIV><A href="https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ecl2.html">https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/ecl2.html</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Kuali CCLA:</DIV><DIV><A href="https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/KualiCCLA_1.1.doc">https://www.collabtools.org/access/content/user/chris.coppola%40rsmart.com/KualiCCLA_1.1.doc</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Thank you for considering this request,</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-- </DIV><DIV>Chris Coppola</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:chris.coppola@rsmart.com">chris.coppola@rsmart.com</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>President, The rSmart Group</DIV><DIV>Director, The Sakai Foundation</DIV><DIV>Director, The Kuali Foundation</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></SPAN></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>