Hi Fabian, how can we treat this reasonably? For example, the Logback library explicitly asks the licensee to choose:
http://logback.qos.ch/license.html Jackson also explicitly requires the person who *redistributes* to choose the license under which he does: http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonDownload I understand the requirement to have a minimized NOTICE file as "it should be easy to understand what are the legal consequences". I think I managed to do this by providing a properly structured and easy to read NOTICE file for each of the different distributions, even though it might be longer than necessary. If anyone needs information on how to redistribute, he will not have to spend more than 15 minutes at most with this filek, and overview is easy to get. On the other hand, I fear the legal consequences of leaving something out that should have been there much more than the 15 minutes investment. Our binary distributions contain a whole framework, which of course has many dependencies to other libraries. In this sense, I think Apache Marmotta is comparable to projects like Apache Geronimo, Apache SOLR, or Apache ODE. All three have similar extensive NOTICE files, e.g.: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/lucene/dev/trunk/solr/NOTICE.txt SOLR even maintains a directory with all notices and licenses: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/lucene/dev/trunk/solr/licenses/ On the other hand, I did not see the requirement for a "minimal" NOTICE in any of the official ASF documentation. The only real requirement is the 4th guiding principle (see http://www.apache.org/legal/3party.html): "Users of Apache products must be provided with all licensing terms applicable to any part of the product and must be given prominent notice when any of those terms include restrictions significantly different from the Apache License." Since this legal discussion is going on endlessly, noone can give a clear guideline on how to treat the different licenses, and IANAL, I suggest to keep the NOTICE files as they are. Just to be on the safe side. Greetings, Sebastian 2013/3/26 Fabian Christ <[email protected]> > Hi, > > the statements about the elected licenses of dual-licensed stuff is > not necessary and I think wrong at this place. > > See http://incubator.markmail.org/thread/r3rj5snd2tnb4nzw > > Best, > - Fabian > > 2013/3/26 Fabian Christ <[email protected]>: > > Hi, > > > > I did not have a look but I have seen many discussions about to > > extensive NOTICE files. So I would like to stress that point. The > > point is that this file is not meant to be a list of what is included. > > Is is meant to hold extra information that some licenses require. So > > this is only about legal aspects. This is not a file to give credit or > > to be fair to authors of included software. > > > > If you want to express credits or just list everything that is > > included, regardless of the license, to give people a complete > > overview, I would suggest to create just another file and name it > > INCLUDED-SOURCES or similar. > > > > So, just keep the NOTICE minimal and for legal aspects only. If your > > included sources or binaries require a lot of NOTICE because of their > > license, fine. Then the NOTICE just has to be extensive ;) > > > > Best, > > - Fabian > > > > 2013/3/26 Sebastian Schaffert <[email protected]>: > >> Dear all (especially mentors), > >> > >> could you please have a look at the updated LICENSE and NOTICE files? I > now > >> took a very different approach following more-or-less what Apache > Geronimo > >> and Apache ODE are doing: > >> - the NOTICE file contains attribution for all 3rd party software > bundled > >> in the respective distribution, a full copy of the 3rd party NOTICE file > >> (if it exists), and a pointer to its source code > >> - the LICENSE file contains a list of licenses (full-text) for reference > >> > >> I think this complies fully with the requirements detailled in > >> http://www.apache.org/legal/3party.html . The only issue might be that > it > >> is too extensive. However, most licenses anyways require some form of > >> attribution (especially also the Apache License), so it is easier to > >> include all of them in the same way. In those cases where this is not > >> strictly required, it is just fair towards the authors to mention them > >> anyways :) > >> > >> The extensive NOTICE files will only be relevant in the binary > >> distributions, because they bundle many 3rd party libraries. The source > >> distribution NOTICE will only mention the Javascript and Java source > files > >> that we include in our source tree. > >> > >> The purpose of this approach is as follows: > >> > >> if someone wants to use and redistribute one of the distributions, > >> regardless whether it is the source or one of the binary distributions, > he > >> needs to be aware of the copyrights of bundled libraries. So he can go > to > >> the NOTICE file and check there for any license that might conflict with > >> his intentions. The NOTICE file mentions the copyright holders and > licenses > >> of all the bundled software, as well as pointers to the respective > source > >> code repositories (to know where it comes from) and (in case it exists) > the > >> content of the referred project's NOTICE file. In case he wants more > >> details about the license, its full text can be looked up in the LICENSE > >> file. > >> > >> Could you please check the following distributions at > >> http://people.apache.org/~sschaffert/: > >> - apache-marmotta-3.0.0-incubating-SNAPSHOT-src.zip > >> - apache-marmotta-3.0.0-incubating-SNAPSHOT-webapp.zip > >> > >> The -ldpath distribution is not yet updated (it will be mostly a subset > of > >> the webapp). The -installer distribution is mostly the same as the > -webapp, > >> but contains in addition Apache Tomcat and IzPack. I am currently > >> uploading, so it might be available only in a few minutes. :) > >> > >> Greetings, > >> > >> Sebastian > > > > > > > > -- > > Fabian > > http://twitter.com/fctwitt > > > > -- > Fabian > http://twitter.com/fctwitt >
