Gregory Nutt wrote on 12/10/23 9:54 AM:
On 12/10/2023 7:15 AM, Alan C. Assis wrote:
I understand your point. And in fact I think the issue is not your
contribution itself, but the future contribution from developers of RTEMS
and Linux that are using GPL.

I think we have to be careful with the word "contribution".  The ASF cannot accept any contribution that is licensed and copyrighted by some other entity.  To "contribute" the code is to donate the code to the ASF without retaining any claims to it. Then the code belongs to the ASF and can be re-licensed as Apache 2.0 with the ASF copyright.

Er, no, that's not how the ASF treats "contributions". In general, when someone contributes their copyrighted work to an Apache project, they keep the copyright, and merely license enough rights to the ASF such that the ASF (through our projects) can then re-ship that contribution at any point in the future as part of a larger work, under terms like the Apache-2.0 license.

Any contributions still "belong" copyright-wise to the original author, who can continue to do whatever else they want with their code, including submitting to other projects, possibly under other licenses.

The legal framework for contributions is twofold, so folks interested in details really need to read both of these:

- Apache-2.0 license, section 5. Submission of Contributions
  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#contributions

- Individual Contributor License Agreement
  https://www.apache.org/licenses/contributor-agreements.html#clas

The point is that the ASF only takes enough licensed rights so that we can safely ship code in our projects, *and* so that users of Apache projects only have to comply with the Apache-2.0 license overall.

--
- Shane
  Member
  The Apache Software Foundation

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