[OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0

[David E. Jones]

This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in smaller  
circles and not among the community more generally.

I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it clarifies a  
lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things that we do as a  
general practice in OFBiz, like stating explicitly that contributions  
to the project become the "property" of the project, which is a  
concern for users of the software because they don't want to worry  
about downloading an open source project that has contributions that  
someone might go after them for using later on. The same thing  
applies to contributions covered by a patent and such.

In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since 99% of us  
are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too many objections.

For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  
the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  
no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  
In my opinion that would kill the project since it is a community  
oriented project and we don't want a single organization to control  
the commercial reigns of the software. To make that more clear, even  
though I understand that I might personally benefit from controlling  
such reigns, I am not so ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  
ignorance or pride in me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  
as to think that OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  
aware that if I tried to do something like that I would get the short  
end of the stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  
self-interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  
stays open for business, and not just open for internal use by  
businesses.

The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on the  
OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

This will involve a change of the license header of various thousands  
of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so it's not an  
easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been done yet...).  
Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some feedback and/or  
sharing of experiences with such things.

-David


 
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[Si Chen-2]

David,

I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and would
personally support the change.

However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety which
could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not a transfer
of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the contributors still
technically own the copyright on their portion of the work and have
simply granted it under the MIT Public License to the rest of us.  Thus,
to remove the existing copyright headers may technically violate the
license for that contributor's work.

Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license for
their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be happy to
sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over the years,
though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An alternative is
to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing MIT License, or
just put the Apache license on new files.  But how would this look?  
Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?

That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal subtleties.

Si

David E. Jones wrote:

>
> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in smaller  
> circles and not among the community more generally.
>
> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it clarifies a  
> lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things that we do as a  
> general practice in OFBiz, like stating explicitly that contributions  
> to the project become the "property" of the project, which is a  
> concern for users of the software because they don't want to worry  
> about downloading an open source project that has contributions that  
> someone might go after them for using later on. The same thing  
> applies to contributions covered by a patent and such.
>
> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
> end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since 99% of us  
> are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too many objections.
>
> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  
> the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  
> no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  
> In my opinion that would kill the project since it is a community  
> oriented project and we don't want a single organization to control  
> the commercial reigns of the software. To make that more clear, even  
> though I understand that I might personally benefit from controlling  
> such reigns, I am not so ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  
> ignorance or pride in me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  
> as to think that OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  
> aware that if I tried to do something like that I would get the short  
> end of the stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  
> self-interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  
> stays open for business, and not just open for internal use by  
> businesses.
>
> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on the  
> OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>
> This will involve a change of the license header of various thousands  
> of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so it's not an  
> easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been done yet...).  
> Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some feedback and/or  
> sharing of experiences with such things.
>
> -David
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[hidden email]
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[David E. Jones]

The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers  
in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the  
policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there  
are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a real  
pain that will only get worse in the future.

As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for  
any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For  
Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by either  
contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in there, or  
tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the  
changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.

So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our feedback  
for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is  
sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns all  
of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little while...

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:

> David,
>
> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
> would personally support the change.
> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not  
> a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion  
> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License  
> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers  
> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be  
> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over  
> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An  
> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing  
> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how  
> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>
> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
> subtleties.
>
> Si
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
>
>>
>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>
>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might go  
>> after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>
>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  
>> many objections.
>>
>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives  
>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry  
>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing  
>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  
>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single  
>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To  
>> make that more clear, even  though I understand that I might  
>> personally benefit from controlling  such reigns, I am not so  
>> ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  ignorance or pride in  
>> me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  as to think that  
>> OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  aware that if I  
>> tried to do something like that I would get the short  end of the  
>> stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  self-
>> interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  
>> open for business, and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>>
>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on  
>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>
>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so  
>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been  
>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate  
>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[Si Chen-2]

David,

My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The Open
For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright, as
there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open For
Business Project".  (See for example:
http://www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
Licensing."

Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this, I
think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a legal
opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.

Si

David E. Jones wrote:

>
> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers  
> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the  
> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there  
> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a real  
> pain that will only get worse in the future.
>
> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for  
> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For  
> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by either  
> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in there, or  
> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the  
> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>
> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our feedback  
> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is  
> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns all  
> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little while...
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  would
>> personally support the change.
>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not  a
>> transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion  of
>> the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License  to
>> the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers  may
>> technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  for
>> their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be  happy
>> to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over  the
>> years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An  
>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing  
>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how  
>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>
>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  subtleties.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>
>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  clarifies
>>> a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  that we do as
>>> a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  explicitly that
>>> contributions  to the project become the  "property" of the project,
>>> which is a  concern for users of the  software because they don't
>>> want to worry  about downloading an  open source project that has
>>> contributions that  someone might go  after them for using later on.
>>> The same thing  applies to  contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>
>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  99%
>>> of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  many
>>> objections.
>>>
>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives  
>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry  
>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing  
>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  a
>>> community  oriented project and we don't want a single  organization
>>> to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To  make that
>>> more clear, even  though I understand that I might  personally
>>> benefit from controlling  such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or
>>> prideful (not that there is no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact
>>> I pride myself on my ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it
>>> is because of me and I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do
>>> something like that I would get the short  end of the  stick pretty
>>> quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll
>>> always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for
>>> business, and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>>>
>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on  
>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>
>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so  
>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been  
>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate  
>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[BJ Freeman]

when I first started this project, I ask if the MIT would ever be
changed or replaced.
there was an emphatic NO from you and andy.

So what says that you will eventually make all the contributions
proprietary, at some future date.

I am addressing your word, not the license.

David E. Jones sent the following on 9/23/05 4:53 PM:

>
> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in smaller  
> circles and not among the community more generally.
>
> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it clarifies a  
> lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things that we do as a  
> general practice in OFBiz, like stating explicitly that contributions  
> to the project become the "property" of the project, which is a  concern
> for users of the software because they don't want to worry  about
> downloading an open source project that has contributions that  someone
> might go after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to
> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>
> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
> end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since 99% of us  are
> or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too many objections.
>
> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  the
> MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  no
> intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  In my
> opinion that would kill the project since it is a community  oriented
> project and we don't want a single organization to control  the
> commercial reigns of the software. To make that more clear, even  though
> I understand that I might personally benefit from controlling  such
> reigns, I am not so ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  
> ignorance or pride in me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  as
> to think that OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  aware
> that if I tried to do something like that I would get the short  end of
> the stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  
> self-interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays
> open for business, and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>
> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on the  
> OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>
> This will involve a change of the license header of various thousands  
> of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so it's not an  easy
> change (which is one reason why it hasn't been done yet...).  Before we
> start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some feedback and/or  sharing of
> experiences with such things.
>
> -David
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[hidden email]
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[Si Chen-2]

By the way -

That's not to say that I oppose changing the license or even putting an
Apache license above the MIT license on existing files and an Apache
license on all new files.  I think that's ok.  Though again, not being a
lawyer, it might be nice to get an opinion from a real one.

Si

Si Chen wrote:

> David,
>
> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
> For Business Project".  (See for example:
> http://www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a
> subtle concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open
> Source Licensing."
>
> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
>
> Si
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
>>
>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers  
>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the  
>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there  
>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a
>> real  pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>
>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for  
>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For  
>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by
>> either  contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in
>> there, or  tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary
>> tossing the  changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such
>> issue persist.
>>
>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our
>> feedback  for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the
>> policy is  sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business
>> Project" owns all  of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck
>> for a little while...
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>
>>> David,
>>>
>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
>>> would personally support the change.
>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not  
>>> a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion  
>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License  
>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers  
>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be  
>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over  
>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An  
>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing  
>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how  
>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>
>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
>>> subtleties.
>>>
>>> Si
>>>
>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>
>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might go  
>>>> after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>
>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  
>>>> many objections.
>>>>
>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives  
>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry  
>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing  
>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  
>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single  
>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To  
>>>> make that more clear, even  though I understand that I might  
>>>> personally benefit from controlling  such reigns, I am not so  
>>>> ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  ignorance or pride in  
>>>> me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  as to think that  
>>>> OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  aware that if I  
>>>> tried to do something like that I would get the short  end of the  
>>>> stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  self-
>>>> interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  
>>>> open for business, and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>
>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on  
>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>
>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so  
>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been  
>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate  
>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
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> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[David E. Jones]

I think I answered this in my original email...

Still, maybe some discussion of it is appropriate more specifically  
for making OFBiz proprietary. What would it mean if Andy and I  
decided to do that? We can't go back in time and change previous  
revisions of OFBiz to make them proprietary as well, so everything  
that is in SVN right now would remain available. The very WORST we  
could do is take down the server so no one can download it from us  
any more, but there are probably many hundreds of copies floating  
around and it wouldn't be hard to get the latest and a new custodian  
could take it from there.

In other words, we have already granted access to the code under the  
MIT license. We can take down our server and stop writing more open  
source code and stop maintaining the current code base, but that's  
about it... that would be the worst case scenario.

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:15 PM, bjfree wrote:

> when I first started this project, I ask if the MIT would ever be  
> changed or replaced.
> there was an emphatic NO from you and andy.
>
> So what says that you will eventually make all the contributions  
> proprietary, at some future date.
>
> I am addressing your word, not the license.
>
> David E. Jones sent the following on 9/23/05 4:53 PM:
>
>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might go  
>> after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  
>> many objections.
>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives  
>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry  
>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing  
>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  
>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single  
>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To  
>> make that more clear, even  though I understand that I might  
>> personally benefit from controlling  such reigns, I am not so  
>> ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  ignorance or pride in  
>> me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  as to think that  
>> OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  aware that if I  
>> tried to do something like that I would get the short  end of the  
>> stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  self-
>> interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  
>> open for business, and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on  
>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so  
>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been  
>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate  
>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>> -David
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David Garrett]

I think that Ofbiz users are exposed at the moment and this change would
help. The level of exposure is either an acceptable risk level or people are
unaware of the potential problem.

My key concern is to ensure
  1. That contributors clearly grant a licence to the copyright they
contribute. The author still retains ownership and all residual rights. The
project has the rights it needs. (see Apache ICLA clause 2 below)

  2. That contributors agree only to contribute their own works and NOT for
example their employers' works to which the contributor does not have the
rights. There is no protection in the case where a contributor "steals"
(whether knowingly or not) code from an employer and submits this.  (see
ICLA clause 4, 5 below)

The Apache 2 Licence provide very similar benefits to the current MIT
licence so I would be happy if the change can be organised. Further Apache 2
has had some serios legal brainpower contributed to try to solve may issues
encountered by the much simpler MIT licence.

Practicalities ... I agree with Si that contributions have been made in
accordance with the MIT licence therefore changing licence will require some
serious legal advice (maybe Apache can help???). But I believe we already
have a problem with unclear rights to contributed code and as David says the
problem will only get worse.

Finally, is this really necessary? Well my view is it is only a problem if
the Ofbiz project becomes more and more successful and/or any project by the
individual users becomes more successful. Ultimately the question gets asked
to the person installing or selling the software ... Do you really have the
rights to licence me this software? "Yes" .... OK prove it ....??? The
bigger the project, the more successful Ofbiz becomes -  the more this
becomes an issue!

Just one more thing(sorry!). My understanding of the Linux dispute between
IBM and BSD centred around code contributed by IBM employees that IBM
claimed was done without permission and without IBM's agreement. Whether it
was or wasn't that style of dispute in itself can be costly and commercially
disasterous. You can never stop this style of dispute but the Apache 2
licence will reduce the risk.

My 0.002 worth
David G



Overview of contributor Agreement:
Contributor License Agreements
The ASF desires that all contributors of ideas, code, or documentation to
the Apache projects complete, sign, and submit (via snailmail or fax) a
Individual Contributor License Agreement (CLA) [PDF form]. The purpose of
this agreement is to clearly define the terms under which intellectual
property has been contributed to the ASF and thereby allow us to defend the
project should there be a legal dispute regarding the software at some
future time. A signed CLA is required to be on file before an individual is
given commit rights to an ASF project.

For a corporation that has assigned employees to work on an Apache project,
a Corporate CLA (CCLA) is available for contributing intellectual property
via the corporation that may have been assigned as part of an employment
agreement. Note that a Corporate CLA does not remove the need for every
developer to sign their own CLA as an individual, to cover their
contributions that are not owned by the corporation signing the CCLA.

Note: If you choose to send this document via fax, rather than via
traditional postal mail, then be absolutely sure that you have sent it
correctly. Often faxes are received back-to-front, blank, or totally
illegible.



For reference I have included some relevant extracts from the Apache
contributor agreement.
Extracts from
     The Apache Software Foundation
     Individual Contributor License Agreement ("Agreement") V2.0
                   http://www.apache.org/licenses/

2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
   this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Foundation and to
   recipients of software distributed by the Foundation a perpetual,
   worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
   copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,
   publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your
   Contributions and such derivative works.

4. You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the above
   license. If your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property
   that you create that includes your Contributions, you represent
   that you have received permission to make Contributions on behalf
   of that employer, that your employer has waived such rights for
   your Contributions to the Foundation, or that your employer has
   executed a separate Corporate CLA with the Foundation.

5. You represent that each of Your Contributions is Your original
   creation (see section 7 for submissions on behalf of others).  You
   represent that Your Contribution submissions include complete
   details of any third-party license or other restriction (including,
   but not limited to, related patents and trademarks) of which you
   are personally aware and which are associated with any part of Your
   Contributions.



-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 10:40 AM
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0


The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers in
files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the policy
clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there are any such
issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a real pain that will only
get worse in the future.

As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for any file
that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For Business Project",
and those we'll have to handle specially by either contacting whoever
managed to get their copyright header in there, or tracing it back in the
revision history and if necessary tossing the changes... I'd rather rewrite
code than have any such issue persist.

So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever contributed
anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of contribution and leaving the
copyright header as-is, and our feedback for those who haven't plus various
postings clarifying the policy is sufficient to determine that "The Open For
Business Project" owns all of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck
for a little while...

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:

> David,
>
> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and would
> personally support the change.
> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety which
> could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not a
> transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the contributors
> still technically own the copyright on their portion of the work and
> have simply granted it under the MIT Public License to the rest of us.  
> Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers may technically violate
> the license for that contributor's work.
> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license for
> their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be happy
> to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over the years,
> though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An alternative is
> to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing MIT License, or
> just put the Apache license on new files.  But how would this look?  
> Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>
> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal
> subtleties.
>
> Si
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
>
>>
>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in smaller  
>> circles and not among the community more generally.
>>
>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it clarifies a  
>> lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things that we do as a  
>> general practice in OFBiz, like stating explicitly that contributions  
>> to the project become the "property" of the project, which is a  
>> concern for users of the software because they don't want to worry  
>> about downloading an open source project that has contributions that  
>> someone might go after them for using later on. The same thing  
>> applies to contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>
>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
>> end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since 99% of us  
>> are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too many
>> objections.
>>
>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  
>> the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  
>> no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  
>> In my opinion that would kill the project since it is a community  
>> oriented project and we don't want a single organization to control  
>> the commercial reigns of the software. To make that more clear, even  
>> though I understand that I might personally benefit from controlling  
>> such reigns, I am not so ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  
>> ignorance or pride in me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  
>> as to think that OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  
>> aware that if I tried to do something like that I would get the short  
>> end of the stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  
>> self- interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  
>> stays open for business, and not just open for internal use by  
>> businesses.
>>
>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on the  
>> OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>
>> This will involve a change of the license header of various thousands  
>> of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so it's not an  
>> easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been done yet...).  
>> Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some feedback and/or  
>> sharing of experiences with such things.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David Garrett]

I agree

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Si Chen
Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 11:05 AM
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0

David,

My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The Open For
Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright, as there has
never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open For Business
Project".  (See for example:
http://www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
Licensing."

Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this, I
think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a legal
opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.

Si

David E. Jones wrote:

>
> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers in
> files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the
> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there are
> any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a real pain
> that will only get worse in the future.
>
> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for any
> file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For Business
> Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by either
> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in there, or
> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the
> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>
> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever
> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of contribution
> and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our feedback for those who
> haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is sufficient to
> determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns all of the code.
> If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little while...
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  would
>> personally support the change.
>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety which
>> could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was not  a
>> transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the contributors
>> still technically own the copyright on their portion  of the work and
>> have simply granted it under the MIT Public License  to the rest of
>> us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers  may technically
>> violate the license for that contributor's work.
>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  for
>> their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be  happy
>> to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over  the
>> years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An
>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing
>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how
>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>
>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  subtleties.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in
>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>
>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  clarifies
>>> a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  that we do as
>>> a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  explicitly that
>>> contributions  to the project become the  "property" of the project,
>>> which is a  concern for users of the  software because they don't
>>> want to worry  about downloading an  open source project that has
>>> contributions that  someone might go  after them for using later on.
>>> The same thing  applies to  contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>
>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
>>> end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  99% of us  
>>> are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  many
>>> objections.
>>>
>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  
>>> the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  
>>> no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  
>>> In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  a community  
>>> oriented project and we don't want a single  organization to control  
>>> the commercial reigns of the software. To  make that more clear,
>>> even  though I understand that I might  personally benefit from
>>> controlling  such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not
>>> that there is no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride
>>> myself on my ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is
>>> because of me and I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something
>>> like that I would get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly.
>>> So, even for me, out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do
>>> what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and
>>> not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>>>
>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on
>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>
>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various
>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so
>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been
>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some
>>> feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>-
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Dev mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev


 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David Garrett]

I feel safe, in fact very safe that the software is Open Source and even if
David/Andy wanted to create a proprietry release they could (Why not I do!).

The issue is that I believe they rightly want to keep developing the Open
Source project without taking away  rights for people. The MIT/BSD/Apache
liceces really pass on very similar rights. Apache 2 I believe will provide
additional benefits to the community.

I really strugle to see any downside in terms of loss of rights that come
from a licence change to Apache 2. The downside I see is the practical
issues of dealling with prior contributions.

Again I do not see this as any sinister plot for David/Andy to take control.
Ultimately if they wanted to make a closed shop product all they would have
to do is stop contributing to the public project. There is NO evidence of
this and we ALL have the ability to do this.

David G

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 11:32 AM
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0


I think I answered this in my original email...

Still, maybe some discussion of it is appropriate more specifically for
making OFBiz proprietary. What would it mean if Andy and I decided to do
that? We can't go back in time and change previous revisions of OFBiz to
make them proprietary as well, so everything that is in SVN right now would
remain available. The very WORST we could do is take down the server so no
one can download it from us any more, but there are probably many hundreds
of copies floating around and it wouldn't be hard to get the latest and a
new custodian could take it from there.

In other words, we have already granted access to the code under the MIT
license. We can take down our server and stop writing more open source code
and stop maintaining the current code base, but that's about it... that
would be the worst case scenario.

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:15 PM, bjfree wrote:

> when I first started this project, I ask if the MIT would ever be
> changed or replaced.
> there was an emphatic NO from you and andy.
>
> So what says that you will eventually make all the contributions
> proprietary, at some future date.
>
> I am addressing your word, not the license.
>
> David E. Jones sent the following on 9/23/05 4:53 PM:
>
>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in smaller  
>> circles and not among the community more generally.
>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it clarifies a  
>> lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things that we do as a  
>> general practice in OFBiz, like stating explicitly that contributions  
>> to the project become the "property" of the project, which is a  
>> concern for users of the software because they don't want to worry  
>> about downloading an open source project that has contributions that  
>> someone might go after them for using later on. The same thing  
>> applies to contributions covered by a patent and such.
>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to make  
>> end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since 99% of us  
>> are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too many
>> objections.
>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives of  
>> the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry there is  
>> no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing for OFBiz.  
>> In my opinion that would kill the project since it is a community  
>> oriented project and we don't want a single organization to control  
>> the commercial reigns of the software. To make that more clear, even  
>> though I understand that I might personally benefit from controlling  
>> such reigns, I am not so ignorant or prideful (not that there is no  
>> ignorance or pride in me... in fact I pride myself on my ignorance)  
>> as to think that OFBiz is what it is because of me and I'm fully  
>> aware that if I tried to do something like that I would get the short  
>> end of the stick pretty quickly. So, even for me, out of "enlightened  
>> self- interest" I'll always do what I can to make sure that OFBiz  
>> stays open for business, and not just open for internal use by  
>> businesses.
>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on the  
>> OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>> This will involve a change of the license header of various thousands  
>> of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so it's not an  
>> easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been done yet...).  
>> Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate some feedback and/or  
>> sharing of experiences with such things.
>> -David
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David E. Jones]

Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:

Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that  
contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed  
to creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is  
based on the Work but not contributed back to it). This action  
implicitly grants copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright  
of the Work, namely The Open For Business Project, unless otherwise  
explicitly stated.

If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary  
manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further  
contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual  
and error-prone effort this might involve).

I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities  
that dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  
reason to try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti-
community and will by its nature cause more harm than good to both  
the community and the individual or organization trying to do so. Not  
because of any retribution or explicit action, that's just the nature  
of things.

If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
course, if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out  
of OFBiz, then it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or  
deriving a living (or partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing  
OFBiz-based work, this is a big concern because with the  
indescribable joys of our modern legal system this could easily  
squash a resource-poor community such as our own. It is the type of  
thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the OFBiz  
community being able to come up with that kind of money.

So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of  
contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
such things.

If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
believe the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now  
so we can take care of it!

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:

> David,
>
> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The  
> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the  
> copyright, as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright  
> to "The Open For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle  
> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source  
> Licensing."
>
> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with  
> this, I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and  
> get a legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do  
> anyway.
>
> Si
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
>
>>
>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright  
>> headers  in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we  
>> have made the  policy clear and asked for permission or a changed  
>> patch. If there  are any such issues we should take care of them  
>> NOW as this is a real  pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>
>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch  
>> for  any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open  
>> For  Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially  
>> by either  contacting whoever managed to get their copyright  
>> header in there, or  tracing it back in the revision history and  
>> if necessary tossing the  changes... I'd rather rewrite code than  
>> have any such issue persist.
>>
>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>> feedback  for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying  
>> the policy is  sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business  
>> Project" owns all  of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to  
>> suck for a little while...
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>
>>
>>> David,
>>>
>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
>>> would personally support the change.
>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was  
>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their  
>>> portion  of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT  
>>> Public License  to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing  
>>> copyright headers  may technically violate the license for that  
>>> contributor's work.
>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would  
>>> be  happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors  
>>> over  the years, though, can we really go find all the  
>>> contributors?  An  alternative is to paste the Apache copyright  
>>> on top of the existing  MIT License, or just put the Apache  
>>> license on new files.  But how  would this look?  Maybe we need  
>>> to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>
>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
>>> subtleties.
>>>
>>> Si
>>>
>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>
>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might  
>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>
>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see  
>>>> too  many objections.
>>>>
>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are  
>>>> derivatives  of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So,  
>>>> don't worry  there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left  
>>>> style licensing  for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the  
>>>> project since it is  a community  oriented project and we don't  
>>>> want a single  organization to control  the commercial reigns of  
>>>> the software. To  make that more clear, even  though I  
>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling  
>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there  
>>>> is no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my  
>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  
>>>> and I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that  
>>>> I would get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So,  
>>>> even for me, out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do  
>>>> what I can to make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business,  
>>>> and not just open for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>
>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available  
>>>> on  the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>
>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count),  
>>>> so  it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't  
>>>> been  done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd  
>>>> appreciate  some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with  
>>>> such things.
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[BJ Freeman]

To keep conitunity and help then end user, how is a "Derivative Work",
that is created for the end user denoted, so the end user knows this.
I am thinking this can be denoted in the webtools.


David E. Jones sent the following on 9/24/05 12:51 AM:

>
> Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
>
> Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that  
> contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed  to
> creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is  based on
> the Work but not contributed back to it). This action  implicitly grants
> copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright  of the Work, namely
> The Open For Business Project, unless otherwise  explicitly stated.
>
> If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary  
> manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further  
> contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual  and
> error-prone effort this might involve).
>
> I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities  that
> dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  reason
> to try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community and
> will by its nature cause more harm than good to both  the community and
> the individual or organization trying to do so. Not  because of any
> retribution or explicit action, that's just the nature  of things.
>
> If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
> course, if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out  
> of OFBiz, then it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or  
> deriving a living (or partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing  
> OFBiz-based work, this is a big concern because with the  indescribable
> joys of our modern legal system this could easily  squash a
> resource-poor community such as our own. It is the type of  thing you
> can buy your way out of, but I don't see the OFBiz  community being able
> to come up with that kind of money.
>
> So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of  
> contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
> such things.
>
> If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
> believe the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now  
> so we can take care of it!
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The  
>> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the  copyright,
>> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright  to "The Open
>> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
>> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle  
>> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source  
>> Licensing."
>>
>> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with  this,
>> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and  get a
>> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do  anyway.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright  headers  
>>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we  have made
>>> the  policy clear and asked for permission or a changed  patch. If
>>> there  are any such issues we should take care of them  NOW as this
>>> is a real  pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>>
>>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch  for  
>>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open  For  
>>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially  by
>>> either  contacting whoever managed to get their copyright  header in
>>> there, or  tracing it back in the revision history and  if necessary
>>> tossing the  changes... I'd rather rewrite code than  have any such
>>> issue persist.
>>>
>>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
>>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
>>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>>> feedback  for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying  the
>>> policy is  sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business  
>>> Project" owns all  of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to  suck
>>> for a little while...
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
>>>> would personally support the change.
>>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was  not  
>>>> a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their  portion  
>>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT  Public
>>>> License  to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing  copyright
>>>> headers  may technically violate the license for that  contributor's
>>>> work.
>>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
>>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would  be  
>>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors  over  
>>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the  contributors?  An  
>>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright  on top of the
>>>> existing  MIT License, or just put the Apache  license on new
>>>> files.  But how  would this look?  Maybe we need  to get a legal
>>>> opinion on this?
>>>>
>>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
>>>> subtleties.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might  go  
>>>>> after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>>
>>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see  
>>>>> too  many objections.
>>>>>
>>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are  derivatives  
>>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So,  don't worry  
>>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left  style
>>>>> licensing  for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the  project
>>>>> since it is  a community  oriented project and we don't  want a
>>>>> single  organization to control  the commercial reigns of  the
>>>>> software. To  make that more clear, even  though I  understand that
>>>>> I might  personally benefit from controlling   such reigns, I am
>>>>> not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there  is no  ignorance or
>>>>> pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my  ignorance)  as to
>>>>> think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  and I'm fully  aware
>>>>> that if I  tried to do something like that  I would get the short  
>>>>> end of the  stick pretty quickly. So,  even for me, out of
>>>>> "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do  what I can to make
>>>>> sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business,  and not just open for
>>>>> internal use by  businesses.
>>>>>
>>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available  on  
>>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>>
>>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count),  so  
>>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't  been  
>>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd  appreciate  
>>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with  such things.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[Si Chen-2]

David,

I don't think that you can get an implicit assignment of copyright like
this, especially, given how long the project has been in existence, it
could be years after somebody had made their contribution.  This really
creates the opportunity for somebody later to say that (1) they made a
contribution, (2) stopped subscribing to the mailing list and visiting
the ofbiz.org-related sites, so (3) did not agree to it.  Then, if the
copyright header changed, they could say that you and whoever did a
project based on OFBiz violated this contirbutor's license grant under
the MIT PL.

Also, in general, I think that asking people to assign their copyright
would require a formal organization, such as foundation or non-profit
corporation, be set up to receive that copyright.  In light of the
recent Mambo split (www.opensourcematters.org), I think people will be
even more sensitive about it.

Do we need the assignment of copyright?  Do we need to go through the
work setting up a foundation or non-profit corporation?

If you can clear up what you really want to do--be it a change of
license, transfering ownership to a foundation, or both--we should
really get some legal advice on how to do it right.  It should not be
too difficult: I know somebody at openbar and contact her for us.

I think that the project is fine as it is.  A foundation and an Apache
2.0 license would be better, but above all, we have to make sure we
don't create legal confusion around it.  FUD is easy to create and hard
to dispel, as we've all unfortunately seen.

Si

David E. Jones wrote:

>
> Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
>
> Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that  
> contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed  
> to creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is  
> based on the Work but not contributed back to it). This action  
> implicitly grants copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright  
> of the Work, namely The Open For Business Project, unless otherwise  
> explicitly stated.
>
> If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary  
> manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further  
> contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual  
> and error-prone effort this might involve).
>
> I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities  
> that dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  
> reason to try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti-
> community and will by its nature cause more harm than good to both  
> the community and the individual or organization trying to do so. Not  
> because of any retribution or explicit action, that's just the nature  
> of things.
>
> If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
> course, if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out  
> of OFBiz, then it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or  
> deriving a living (or partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing  
> OFBiz-based work, this is a big concern because with the  
> indescribable joys of our modern legal system this could easily  
> squash a resource-poor community such as our own. It is the type of  
> thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the OFBiz  
> community being able to come up with that kind of money.
>
> So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of  
> contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
> such things.
>
> If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
> believe the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now  
> so we can take care of it!
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The  
>> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the  
>> copyright, as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright  
>> to "The Open For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
>> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle  
>> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source  
>> Licensing."
>>
>> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with  
>> this, I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and  
>> get a legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do  
>> anyway.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright  
>>> headers  in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we  
>>> have made the  policy clear and asked for permission or a changed  
>>> patch. If there  are any such issues we should take care of them  
>>> NOW as this is a real  pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>>
>>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch  for  
>>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open  For  
>>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially  by
>>> either  contacting whoever managed to get their copyright  header in
>>> there, or  tracing it back in the revision history and  if necessary
>>> tossing the  changes... I'd rather rewrite code than  have any such
>>> issue persist.
>>>
>>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
>>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
>>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>>> feedback  for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying  
>>> the policy is  sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business  
>>> Project" owns all  of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to  suck
>>> for a little while...
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
>>>> would personally support the change.
>>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was  
>>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their  portion  
>>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT  Public
>>>> License  to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing  
>>>> copyright headers  may technically violate the license for that  
>>>> contributor's work.
>>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
>>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would  
>>>> be  happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors  
>>>> over  the years, though, can we really go find all the  
>>>> contributors?  An  alternative is to paste the Apache copyright  on
>>>> top of the existing  MIT License, or just put the Apache  license
>>>> on new files.  But how  would this look?  Maybe we need  to get a
>>>> legal opinion on this?
>>>>
>>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
>>>> subtleties.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might  
>>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>>
>>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see  
>>>>> too  many objections.
>>>>>
>>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are  derivatives  
>>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So,  don't worry  
>>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left  style
>>>>> licensing  for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the  project
>>>>> since it is  a community  oriented project and we don't  want a
>>>>> single  organization to control  the commercial reigns of  the
>>>>> software. To  make that more clear, even  though I  understand
>>>>> that I might  personally benefit from controlling   such reigns, I
>>>>> am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there  is no  ignorance
>>>>> or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my  ignorance)  as to
>>>>> think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  and I'm fully  
>>>>> aware that if I  tried to do something like that  I would get the
>>>>> short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So,  even for me, out of
>>>>> "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do  what I can to make
>>>>> sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business,  and not just open for
>>>>> internal use by  businesses.
>>>>>
>>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available  
>>>>> on  the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>>
>>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count),  
>>>>> so  it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't  
>>>>> been  done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd  
>>>>> appreciate  some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with  
>>>>> such things.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Dev mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David Garrett]

Would you mind providing some reading references that are available for
"Work"/"Derivative Work" distinction.

David G

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 5:51 PM
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0


Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:

Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that
contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed to
creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is based on the
Work but not contributed back to it). This action implicitly grants
copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright of the Work, namely The
Open For Business Project, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary
manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further
contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual and
error-prone effort this might involve).

I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities that
dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one reason to
try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community and will
by its nature cause more harm than good to both the community and the
individual or organization trying to do so. Not because of any retribution
or explicit action, that's just the nature of things.

If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of course,
if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out of OFBiz, then
it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or deriving a living (or
partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing OFBiz-based work, this is a
big concern because with the indescribable joys of our modern legal system
this could easily squash a resource-poor community such as our own. It is
the type of thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the OFBiz
community being able to come up with that kind of money.

So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of
contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do such
things.

If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't believe
the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now so we can take
care of it!

-David


On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:

> David,
>
> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
> Licensing."
>
> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
>
> Si
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
>
>>
>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers  
>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the  
>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there  
>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a real  
>> pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>
>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for  
>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For  
>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by either  
>> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in there, or  
>> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the  
>> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>>
>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever  
>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of  
>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our feedback  
>> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is  
>> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns all  
>> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little
>> while...
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>
>>
>>> David,
>>>
>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and  
>>> would personally support the change.
>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety  
>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was  
>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the  
>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion  
>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License  
>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers  
>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license  
>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be  
>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over  
>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An  
>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing  
>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how  
>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>
>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal  
>>> subtleties.
>>>
>>> Si
>>>
>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in  
>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>
>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it  
>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things  
>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating  
>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the  
>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the  
>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an  
>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might  
>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to  
>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>
>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to  
>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since  
>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too  
>>>> many objections.
>>>>
>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives  
>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry  
>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing  
>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is  
>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single  
>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To  
>>>> make that more clear, even  though I
>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling  
>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there is
>>>> no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my
>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me and
>>>> I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that I would
>>>> get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So, even for me,
>>>> out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do what I can to
>>>> make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and not just open
>>>> for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>
>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on  
>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>
>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various  
>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so  
>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been  
>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate  
>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David E. Jones]

Perhaps the best thing to do is read the Apache License, 2.0. It has  
pretty good descriptions of this. There is a lot of commentary about  
open source licensing that talks about this too.

The link that Si included from the GNUe web site is an interesting  
read as well. They talk about the notion of implicit copyright  
assignment, and then explain that they decided not to do that and  
describe their copyright assignment policy, which is rather strict...  
and an interesting read.

Si mentioned a book about open source licensing that might be good to  
look at, but I haven't read that one myself. The one I have is called  
"Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing" by Andrew M.  
St. Laurent, published by O'Reilly. It has some good discussion on  
these various things and some good narrative mixed in with the text  
of various open source licenses, including the Apache 2.0.

-David


On Sep 24, 2005, at 6:49 PM, David Garrett wrote:

> Would you mind providing some reading references that are available  
> for
> "Work"/"Derivative Work" distinction.
>
> David G
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:dev-
> [hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of David E. Jones
> Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 5:51 PM
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0
>
>
> Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
>
> Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that
> contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed to
> creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is based  
> on the
> Work but not contributed back to it). This action implicitly grants
> copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright of the Work,  
> namely The
> Open For Business Project, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
>
> If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary
> manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further
> contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual and
> error-prone effort this might involve).
>
> I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities that
> dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  
> reason to
> try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community  
> and will
> by its nature cause more harm than good to both the community and the
> individual or organization trying to do so. Not because of any  
> retribution
> or explicit action, that's just the nature of things.
>
> If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
> course,
> if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out of  
> OFBiz, then
> it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or deriving a living (or
> partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing OFBiz-based work,  
> this is a
> big concern because with the indescribable joys of our modern legal  
> system
> this could easily squash a resource-poor community such as our own.  
> It is
> the type of thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the  
> OFBiz
> community being able to come up with that kind of money.
>
> So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of
> contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
> such
> things.
>
> If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
> believe
> the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now so we  
> can take
> care of it!
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>
>> David,
>>
>> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
>> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
>> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
>> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
>> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
>> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
>> Licensing."
>>
>> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
>> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
>> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers
>>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the
>>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there
>>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a  
>>> real
>>> pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>>
>>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for
>>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For
>>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by  
>>> either
>>> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in  
>>> there, or
>>> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the
>>> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>>>
>>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever
>>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of
>>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>>> feedback
>>> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is
>>> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns  
>>> all
>>> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little
>>> while...
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and
>>>> would personally support the change.
>>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety
>>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was
>>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the
>>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion
>>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License
>>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers
>>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license
>>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be
>>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over
>>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An
>>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing
>>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how
>>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>>
>>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal
>>>> subtleties.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in
>>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it
>>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things
>>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating
>>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the
>>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the
>>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an
>>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might
>>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to
>>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>>
>>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to
>>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since
>>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too
>>>>> many objections.
>>>>>
>>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives
>>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry
>>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing
>>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is
>>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single
>>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To
>>>>> make that more clear, even  though I
>>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling
>>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there is
>>>>> no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my
>>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  
>>>>> and
>>>>> I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that I  
>>>>> would
>>>>> get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So, even for me,
>>>>> out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do what I can to
>>>>> make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and not just open
>>>>> for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>>
>>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on
>>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>>
>>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various
>>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so
>>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been
>>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate
>>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David E. Jones]

Oh, I forgot to mention... The commentary based on the Apache  
License, 2.0 in the Understanding Open Source & Free Software  
Licensing book talks about the terms "Work" and "Derivative" work in  
terms of their legal definitions as used in copyright law. I think  
that is where all of this stems from and where the various open  
source licenses get the concepts and terminology.

-David


On Sep 24, 2005, at 6:49 PM, David Garrett wrote:

> Would you mind providing some reading references that are available  
> for
> "Work"/"Derivative Work" distinction.
>
> David G
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:dev-
> [hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of David E. Jones
> Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 5:51 PM
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0
>
>
> Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
>
> Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that
> contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed to
> creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is based  
> on the
> Work but not contributed back to it). This action implicitly grants
> copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright of the Work,  
> namely The
> Open For Business Project, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
>
> If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary
> manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further
> contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual and
> error-prone effort this might involve).
>
> I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities that
> dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  
> reason to
> try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community  
> and will
> by its nature cause more harm than good to both the community and the
> individual or organization trying to do so. Not because of any  
> retribution
> or explicit action, that's just the nature of things.
>
> If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
> course,
> if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out of  
> OFBiz, then
> it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or deriving a living (or
> partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing OFBiz-based work,  
> this is a
> big concern because with the indescribable joys of our modern legal  
> system
> this could easily squash a resource-poor community such as our own.  
> It is
> the type of thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the  
> OFBiz
> community being able to come up with that kind of money.
>
> So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of
> contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
> such
> things.
>
> If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
> believe
> the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now so we  
> can take
> care of it!
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>
>> David,
>>
>> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
>> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
>> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
>> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
>> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
>> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
>> Licensing."
>>
>> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
>> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
>> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers
>>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the
>>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there
>>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a  
>>> real
>>> pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>>
>>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for
>>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For
>>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by  
>>> either
>>> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in  
>>> there, or
>>> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the
>>> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>>>
>>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever
>>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of
>>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>>> feedback
>>> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is
>>> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns  
>>> all
>>> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little
>>> while...
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and
>>>> would personally support the change.
>>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety
>>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was
>>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the
>>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion
>>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License
>>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers
>>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license
>>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be
>>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over
>>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An
>>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing
>>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how
>>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>>
>>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal
>>>> subtleties.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in
>>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it
>>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things
>>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating
>>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the
>>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the
>>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an
>>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might
>>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to
>>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>>
>>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to
>>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since
>>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too
>>>>> many objections.
>>>>>
>>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives
>>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry
>>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing
>>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is
>>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single
>>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To
>>>>> make that more clear, even  though I
>>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling
>>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there is
>>>>> no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my
>>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  
>>>>> and
>>>>> I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that I  
>>>>> would
>>>>> get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So, even for me,
>>>>> out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do what I can to
>>>>> make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and not just open
>>>>> for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>>
>>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on
>>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>>
>>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various
>>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so
>>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been
>>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate
>>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[David Garrett]

Thanks I'll do the background reading.....

There is a very simple document I like
http://www.hiit.fi/de/valimaki_oksanen_lawtech_2002.pdf
See Section 3 Ownership of Rights

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Sunday, 25 September 2005 11:36 AM
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0


Oh, I forgot to mention... The commentary based on the Apache License, 2.0
in the Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing book talks about
the terms "Work" and "Derivative" work in terms of their legal definitions
as used in copyright law. I think that is where all of this stems from and
where the various open source licenses get the concepts and terminology.

-David


On Sep 24, 2005, at 6:49 PM, David Garrett wrote:

> Would you mind providing some reading references that are available
> for "Work"/"Derivative Work" distinction.
>
> David G
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:dev-
> [hidden email]] On Behalf Of David E. Jones
> Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 5:51 PM
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0
>
>
> Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
>
> Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that
> contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed to
> creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is based  
> on the
> Work but not contributed back to it). This action implicitly grants
> copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright of the Work,  
> namely The
> Open For Business Project, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
>
> If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary
> manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further
> contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual and
> error-prone effort this might involve).
>
> I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities that
> dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one  
> reason to
> try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community  
> and will
> by its nature cause more harm than good to both the community and the
> individual or organization trying to do so. Not because of any  
> retribution
> or explicit action, that's just the nature of things.
>
> If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of  
> course,
> if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out of  
> OFBiz, then
> it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or deriving a living (or
> partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing OFBiz-based work,  
> this is a
> big concern because with the indescribable joys of our modern legal  
> system
> this could easily squash a resource-poor community such as our own.  
> It is
> the type of thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the  
> OFBiz
> community being able to come up with that kind of money.
>
> So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of
> contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do  
> such
> things.
>
> If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't  
> believe
> the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now so we  
> can take
> care of it!
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>
>
>> David,
>>
>> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
>> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
>> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
>> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
>> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
>> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
>> Licensing."
>>
>> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
>> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
>> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
>>
>> Si
>>
>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers
>>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the
>>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there
>>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a  
>>> real
>>> pain that will only get worse in the future.
>>>
>>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for
>>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For
>>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by  
>>> either
>>> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in  
>>> there, or
>>> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the
>>> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
>>>
>>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever
>>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of
>>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our  
>>> feedback
>>> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is
>>> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns  
>>> all
>>> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little
>>> while...
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and
>>>> would personally support the change.
>>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety
>>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was
>>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the
>>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion
>>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License
>>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers
>>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
>>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license
>>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be
>>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over
>>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An
>>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing
>>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how
>>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
>>>>
>>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal
>>>> subtleties.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in
>>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it
>>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things
>>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating
>>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the
>>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the
>>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an
>>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might
>>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to
>>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
>>>>>
>>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to
>>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since
>>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too
>>>>> many objections.
>>>>>
>>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives
>>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry
>>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing
>>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is
>>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single
>>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To
>>>>> make that more clear, even  though I
>>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling
>>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there is
>>>>> no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my
>>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me  
>>>>> and
>>>>> I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that I  
>>>>> would
>>>>> get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So, even for me,
>>>>> out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do what I can to
>>>>> make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and not just open
>>>>> for internal use by  businesses.
>>>>>
>>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on
>>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
>>>>>
>>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various
>>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so
>>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been
>>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate
>>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

Thanks David,

Very interesting and clear document. I keep a copy :o)

Jacques

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Garrett" <[hidden email]>
To: "'OFBiz Project Development Discussion'" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 7:07 AM
Subject: RE: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0

> Thanks I'll do the background reading.....
>
> There is a very simple document I like
> http://www.hiit.fi/de/valimaki_oksanen_lawtech_2002.pdf
> See Section 3 Ownership of Rights
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of David E. Jones
> Sent: Sunday, 25 September 2005 11:36 AM
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0
>
>
> Oh, I forgot to mention... The commentary based on the Apache License, 2.0
> in the Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing book talks

about

> the terms "Work" and "Derivative" work in terms of their legal definitions
> as used in copyright law. I think that is where all of this stems from and
> where the various open source licenses get the concepts and terminology.
>
> -David
>
>
> On Sep 24, 2005, at 6:49 PM, David Garrett wrote:
>
> > Would you mind providing some reading references that are available
> > for "Work"/"Derivative Work" distinction.
> >
> > David G
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [hidden email] [mailto:dev-
> > [hidden email]] On Behalf Of David E. Jones
> > Sent: Saturday, 24 September 2005 5:51 PM
> > To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> > Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Change of License from MIT to Apache 2.0
> >
> >
> > Okay, after reading up on this a bit here is my position on it:
> >
> > Making a contribution to OFBiz (the "Work") constitutes adding that
> > contribution to the Work and making it part of the Work (as opposed to
> > creating a "Derivative Work", which would be anything that is based
> > on the
> > Work but not contributed back to it). This action implicitly grants
> > copyright assignment to the owner of the copyright of the Work,
> > namely The
> > Open For Business Project, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
> >
> > If anyone has a problem with this we should remove (and if necessary
> > manually replace) their contributions and blacklist from further
> > contribution (even if I shutter to think of what sort of continual and
> > error-prone effort this might involve).
> >
> > I think we all have enough headaches in our day to day activities that
> > dealing with this is nothing short of absurd. There is only one
> > reason to
> > try to slip this sort of thing in, and it is very anti- community
> > and will
> > by its nature cause more harm than good to both the community and the
> > individual or organization trying to do so. Not because of any
> > retribution
> > or explicit action, that's just the nature of things.
> >
> > If this issue does come up it is a huge liability to all of us. Of
> > course,
> > if you have nothing invested and are not getting anything out of
> > OFBiz, then
> > it doesn't matter. But for anyone using OFBiz or deriving a living (or
> > partial living as the case may be... ;) ) doing OFBiz-based work,
> > this is a
> > big concern because with the indescribable joys of our modern legal
> > system
> > this could easily squash a resource-poor community such as our own.
> > It is
> > the type of thing you can buy your way out of, but I don't see the
> > OFBiz
> > community being able to come up with that kind of money.
> >
> > So, given the risks, we should simply not accept these sorts of
> > contributions or tolerate the attitudes that drive the desire to do
> > such
> > things.
> >
> > If anyone has made contributions under false pretenses or doesn't
> > believe
> > the implied copyright assignment applies to them, tell us now so we
> > can take
> > care of it!
> >
> > -David
> >
> >
> > On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Si Chen wrote:
> >
> >
> >> David,
> >>
> >> My concern is actually that with a copyright header which says "The
> >> Open For Business Project", the contributor still owns the copyright,
> >> as there has never been a formal assignment of copyright to "The Open
> >> For Business Project".  (See for example: http://
> >> www.gnuenterprise.org/developers/copyleft.php)  This was a subtle
> >> concept of "chain of title" in the Larry Rosen's book "Open Source
> >> Licensing."
> >>
> >> Honestly, though, I know I'm not a lawyer.  If we go ahead with this,
> >> I think we should consult openbar.org or softwarefreedom and get a
> >> legal opinion from them.  It probably is a good thing to do anyway.
> >>
> >> Si
> >>
> >> David E. Jones wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> The general practice has been to NEVER change the copyright headers
> >>> in files. Various people have tried and I hope that we have made the
> >>> policy clear and asked for permission or a changed patch. If there
> >>> are any such issues we should take care of them NOW as this is a
> >>> real
> >>> pain that will only get worse in the future.
> >>>
> >>> As we go through replacing license headers we'll have to watch for
> >>> any file that has a copyright header other than for "The Open For
> >>> Business Project", and those we'll have to handle specially by
> >>> either
> >>> contacting whoever managed to get their copyright header in
> >>> there, or
> >>> tracing it back in the revision history and if necessary tossing the
> >>> changes... I'd rather rewrite code than have any such issue persist.
> >>>
> >>> So, no, I don't think we have to contact everyone who has ever
> >>> contributed anything to OFBiz. I think the implication of
> >>> contribution and leaving the copyright header as-is, and our
> >>> feedback
> >>> for those who haven't plus various postings clarifying the policy is
> >>> sufficient to determine that "The Open For Business Project" owns
> >>> all
> >>> of the code. If I'm wrong, life is going to suck for a little
> >>> while...
> >>>
> >>> -David
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:29 PM, Si Chen wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> David,
> >>>>
> >>>> I think that the Apache license is a better license to use and
> >>>> would personally support the change.
> >>>> However, I do have one concern: there might be a legal subtlety
> >>>> which could make the logistics complicated.  Because there was
> >>>> not  a transfer of copyright from contributors, I wonder if the
> >>>> contributors still technically own the copyright on their portion
> >>>> of the work and have simply granted it under the MIT Public License
> >>>> to the rest of us.  Thus, to remove the existing copyright headers
> >>>> may technically violate the license for that contributor's work.
> >>>> Of course, if each contributor authorized this change of license
> >>>> for their piece of the contribution, it would be fine.  I would be
> >>>> happy to sign this myself.  Given the number of contributors over
> >>>> the years, though, can we really go find all the contributors?  An
> >>>> alternative is to paste the Apache copyright on top of the existing
> >>>> MIT License, or just put the Apache license on new files.  But how
> >>>> would this look?  Maybe we need to get a legal opinion on this?
> >>>>
> >>>> That's all.  Again, great idea - just concerned about legal
> >>>> subtleties.
> >>>>
> >>>> Si
> >>>>
> >>>> David E. Jones wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This has been discussed a few times, though I think mostly in
> >>>>> smaller  circles and not among the community more generally.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think we should get serious about doing this soon as it
> >>>>> clarifies a  lot of issues and puts in writing a lot of things
> >>>>> that we do as a  general practice in OFBiz, like stating
> >>>>> explicitly that contributions  to the project become the
> >>>>> "property" of the project, which is a  concern for users of the
> >>>>> software because they don't want to worry  about downloading an
> >>>>> open source project that has contributions that  someone might
> >>>>> go  after them for using later on. The same thing  applies to
> >>>>> contributions covered by a patent and such.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In general the reason for moving from MIT and Apache 2.0 is to
> >>>>> make  end-users of the software feel more comfortable, so since
> >>>>> 99% of us  are or represent end-users, I don't think we'll see too
> >>>>> many objections.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> For those who are wondering, the Apache licenses are derivatives
> >>>>> of  the MIT/BSD camp, and NOT of the GPL camp. So, don't worry
> >>>>> there is  no intention to ever move to a copy-left style licensing
> >>>>> for OFBiz.  In my opinion that would kill the project since it is
> >>>>> a community  oriented project and we don't want a single
> >>>>> organization to control  the commercial reigns of the software. To
> >>>>> make that more clear, even  though I
> >>>>> understand that I might  personally benefit from controlling
> >>>>> such reigns, I am not so  ignorant or prideful (not that there is
> >>>>> no  ignorance or pride in  me... in fact I pride myself on my
> >>>>> ignorance)  as to think that  OFBiz is what it is because of me
> >>>>> and
> >>>>> I'm fully  aware that if I  tried to do something like that I
> >>>>> would
> >>>>> get the short  end of the  stick pretty quickly. So, even for me,
> >>>>> out of "enlightened  self- interest" I'll always do what I can to
> >>>>> make sure that OFBiz  stays  open for business, and not just open
> >>>>> for internal use by  businesses.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The full text of the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses are available on
> >>>>> the  OSI web site at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This will involve a change of the license header of various
> >>>>> thousands  of files in OFBiz (around 10,000 by a rough count), so
> >>>>> it's not an  easy change (which is one reason why it hasn't been
> >>>>> done yet...).  Before we start taking the plunge I'd appreciate
> >>>>> some feedback and/or  sharing of experiences with such things.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -David
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>>> [hidden email]
> >>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>> [hidden email]
> >>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> -
> >>> ---
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Dev mailing list
> >>> [hidden email]
> >>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Dev mailing list
> >> [hidden email]
> >> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dev mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[Adam Heath-2]

On Sat, 24 Sep 2005, Si Chen wrote:

> I don't think that you can get an implicit assignment of copyright like
> this, especially, given how long the project has been in existence, it
> could be years after somebody had made their contribution.  This really
> creates the opportunity for somebody later to say that (1) they made a
> contribution, (2) stopped subscribing to the mailing list and visiting
> the ofbiz.org-related sites, so (3) did not agree to it.  Then, if the
> copyright header changed, they could say that you and whoever did a
> project based on OFBiz violated this contirbutor's license grant under
> the MIT PL.

This is a very huge point.  We absolutely *MUST* contact *EVERYONE* who has
ever submitted code to ofbiz.  Even if their submission was not applied as is,
if the final solution was based on their code, then they are part of the
copyright chain.

This applies to all versions of the code, going back thru all time.  This
could have been avoided if there had been a copyright assignment in the first
place.
 
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[David E. Jones]

Sorry, I'm not a lawyer but so far from what I've read this is  
ridiculous. If you modify a file with a copyright notice in it and  
you don't add your own copyright notice, how are not implying an  
assignment of copyright?

I haven't read anything in ANY of the links submitted that would lead  
me to believe this. In fact, it seems that the opposite is true. Most  
acknowledge that doing this implies an assignment of copyright, but  
sometimes it's better to not take a chance.

Is this really such a big deal? How many people feel uncomfortable  
with assigning the copyright of their contributions to "The Open For  
Business Project"? Is this a sentiment that has been a background  
issue that is just now surfacing?

Forgive me if I sound insensitive, I'm just having a hard time  
fathoming this in any reality I've experienced....

-David


On Sep 25, 2005, at 11:12 PM, Adam Heath wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Sep 2005, Si Chen wrote:
>
>
>> I don't think that you can get an implicit assignment of copyright  
>> like
>> this, especially, given how long the project has been in  
>> existence, it
>> could be years after somebody had made their contribution.  This  
>> really
>> creates the opportunity for somebody later to say that (1) they  
>> made a
>> contribution, (2) stopped subscribing to the mailing list and  
>> visiting
>> the ofbiz.org-related sites, so (3) did not agree to it.  Then, if  
>> the
>> copyright header changed, they could say that you and whoever did a
>> project based on OFBiz violated this contirbutor's license grant  
>> under
>> the MIT PL.
>>
>
> This is a very huge point.  We absolutely *MUST* contact *EVERYONE*  
> who has
> ever submitted code to ofbiz.  Even if their submission was not  
> applied as is,
> if the final solution was based on their code, then they are part  
> of the
> copyright chain.
>
> This applies to all versions of the code, going back thru all  
> time.  This
> could have been avoided if there had been a copyright assignment in  
> the first
> place.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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