Thanks Greg, I am fully in support of your position here. The ASF is supposed to make it easier for developers to develop. It is not supposed to be creating red tape to guard the entrance to the hallowed halls.
Ross ________________________________________ From: Greg Stein <gst...@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2019 5:56 PM To: general@incubator.apache.org Subject: Business decisions and risk (was: [DISCUSS] IPMC votes on releases) See further below for an unfortunately trimmed thread. A couple paragraphs that I wrote early-thread are important to add: ---- Option (F): stop calling them official ASF releases, which means PMC votes are not required. ---- > In that case voting would not be required and they wouldn’t have to follow > ASF policy. Right. > If they are not official releases then we probably can’t release or > distribute them on ASF infrastructure. I see no problem with using our infrastructure to distribute F/OSS materials. Why would the Foundation want to be against that? If it is labeled properly, then ... roll with it. We distribute a *ton* of stuff that wasn't produced by the ASF. We incorporate that stuff into a larger work, but it isn't "ours". Yet we put it onto our servers. Clearly, these bits and bobs and blobs *are* intended to be F/OSS. Maybe somebody thinks a LICENSE file isn't correct, so maybe ACME Inc. can't use it ... but John and Jane and Joe certainly want to, and *can*. Isn't that our goal? ---- I see no problems with the purported "risk" mentioned below. Would some mis-licensing occur? Likely. Is it material to the Foundation's mission? Nah. What if something appears on our servers without a clear F/OSS license? Does John or Jane care? Nopes. But we fix it in a future release. Move along, everybody is happy. I'd like to see the IPMC get out of the way of the podlings' releases. I see no reason for us to be a gate, and many more reasons to back off and let podlings get their work done. Cheers, -g On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 7:46 PM Greg Stein <gst...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 6:32 AM Justin Mclean <jus...@classsoftware.com> > wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> > I see no problem with using our infrastructure to distribute F/OSS >> > materials. Why would the Foundation want to be against that? If it is >> > labeled properly, then ... roll with it. >> >> It often isn’t labelled properly. There’s a reasonable risk that some of >> what would be placed there and distributed isn’t actually F/OSS. > > > And what would be the blowback of something on our server with incorrect > information? Very little. Mostly, we'd just move on. Maybe we delete it. > > >> I can point you to several example of this. I’m not sure how the >> incubator (or the board) would feel about that risk, so that would be >> something we would be need to consider further. Also > > > Welp. Then I will pose that question, rather than this endless > pontificating about "risk". > > >> while Jane and John may be fine with that, a lot of companies that use >> Apache releases may not be. >> > > I already acknowledged that. Many people could use software regardless of > its licensing. The license typically only matters in *redistribution* > scenarios. Things like the AGPL affect *usage*, but that is very, very > atypical. I'd think 99% of downstream could use our software, even with > gummed-up licensing. > > >> > You're conflating *learning* with *releases*. These can be handled >> separately. >> >> How exactly? > > > You're saying that releases are the control point to learning. I say just > let the releases go. > > You want to teach? Then you can use the releases like "that wasn't good. > next time: do A and B". Over time, releases will get fixed. But the IPMC > should not have to manage the releases. > > Cheers, > -g > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
