Hi all, After consulting with some of our colleagues at MathWorks, we wanted to follow-up on this thread.
Before going through the official ASF legal process, we wanted to give the community some insight into our thinking about why our proposed license may be appropriate for Category B consideration. Our interpretation of the ASF 3rd Party License Policy [1] was that Category B licenses are not limited to standard licenses, but, rather, must meet the Appropriately Labelled Condition and the Binary-Only Inclusion Condition. The proposed license [2] we shared is intended to meet these conditions. However, we understand that our interpretation may not be accurate. The binaries we plan to submit, and the accompanying license, are similar to the use cases listed under “Handling Licenses That Prevent Modification” [3] in the Category B description. While most of the contents of the distributed MLTBX file would be Apache-licensed, the compiled MEX functions would be dynamically linked against proprietary MathWorks shared libraries, which would cause inclusion of non-Apache licensed object code. The goal of the proposed license is to allow the MLTBX file to be used and distributed freely as an official ASF release artifact. Ideally, MathWorks would like to restrict reverse engineering and modification of the proprietary components and the proposed license includes a clause for this restriction. Since the MATLAB Interface to Arrow will likely only be useful to users of MathWorks products, our hope is that this restriction would not be an impediment to users. We understand this is an unusual situation and appreciate the community's support in helping us identify a solution. [1] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html [2] https://github.com/apache/arrow/files/13955180/license.txt [3] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#no-modification Best Regards, Sarah and Kevin From: Sarah Gilmore <sgilm...@mathworks.com> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2024 1:58 PM To: dev@arrow.apache.org <dev@arrow.apache.org> Cc: Kevin Gurney <kgur...@mathworks.com> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS][MATLAB] Proposed "Category B" License for Bundling MATLAB MEX Build Artifacts in Official Arrow Release Hi Roman, > FWIW: while these are all excellent questions for the pre-work, if there > needs to be an ultimate statement on this -- you'll have to file a LEGAL > JIRA. E.g.: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-506 > > (plz include all the relevant details when filing it -- whatever comes > out of this thread). Thank you for the guidance. We suspected this may be the case and will be sure to include all the relevant information when we file the Jira issue. Best, Sarah and Kevin From: Roman Shaposhnik <r...@apache.org> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2024 12:15 PM To: dev@arrow.apache.org <dev@arrow.apache.org> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS][MATLAB] Proposed "Category B" License for Bundling MATLAB MEX Build Artifacts in Official Arrow Release On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 12:24 PM Ian Cook <ianmc...@apache.org> wrote: > > Hi Sarah, > > Thanks for pursuing this. > > The ASF 3rd Party License Policy lists a number of standard, > off-the-shelf licenses that are compatible with Category B, but the > policy does not include any provision for custom-written licenses. > This appears to be a custom-written license. Is that correct? > > Is this custom-written license based on one of the listed Category B > licenses? If so, can you tell us which one? If not, can you provide > some explanation of why this license should be considered to meet the > criteria for Category B? FWIW: while these are all excellent questions for the pre-work, if there needs to be an ultimate statement on this -- you'll have to file a LEGAL JIRA. E.g.: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-506 (plz include all the relevant details when filing it -- whatever comes out of this thread). Thanks, Roman. > > Thank you, > Ian > > On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 12:08 PM Sarah Gilmore > <sgilm...@mathworks.com.invalid> wrote: > > > > Hi Everyone, > > > > Kevin Gurney and I have been working on integrating the MATLAB Arrow > > bindings with the project's release processes in this pull request [1]. > > While working on integrating with the release tooling, we realized that we > > need to ensure that the licenses of any MEX artifacts [2] bundled with the > > released MLTBX [3] file are compatible with the ASF 3rd Party License > > Policy [4]. > > > > After several rounds of discussion with some colleagues at MathWorks, we > > came up with a license [5] that is intended to meet the requirements for > > inclusion as a "Category B" [6] license according to the ASF 3rd Party > > License Policy. > > > > Our goal is to make sure we are doing the right thing here, so, as per > > Kou's suggestion [7], we wanted to share the proposed license [5] with the > > broader Arrow development community. We understand this may need further > > input from ASF Legal as well. > > > > Please let us know what we can do to help move this forward. We sincerely > > appreciate everyone's support as we navigate these licensing requirements. > > > > [1] https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/38660 > > [2] https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/call-mex-functions.html > > [3] > > https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating-help.html?s_tid=CRUX_lftnav > > [4] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html > > [5] https://github.com/apache/arrow/files/13955180/license.txt > > [6] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-b > > [7] https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/38660#discussion_r1454804607 > > > > Best, > > > > Sarah Gilmore > >
