On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Andrea Pescetti <pesce...@apache.org> wrote: > On 13/02/2013 Rob Weir wrote: >> >> For example, I've seen it written that to >> contribute to AOO means that you must transfer ownership of the code >> to teh ASF. Of course, this is not true. You retain the ownership > > > I added a sentence about this to > http://openoffice.apache.org/contributing-code.html > since this is a common misconception indeed. The rest of the page is really > informative, it deserves publicity! >
Thanks. I'm hoping it does just that -- clear up any confusion. However, it is hard to be both concise and accurate. As we know the ASF policy in this area is nuanced, and a contribution is more the start of a process than a single instant event. For example, the page currently says, "The code must be under the Apache License 2.0. Any dependencies must also be under that license or a similar permissive license." This is a fair piece of advise, but we know that the truth is far more complicated. There can be some non-permissive dependencies, in binary form, with some licenses, for example. But if we had to explain it completely the page would unnecessarily duplicate what already exists elsewhere on apache.org. And unfortunately what already exists is inscrutable to the typical reader of that page. But I did recently think about an alternative way of expressing the requirement, which might show the flexibility inherent in the process. Instead of talking directly about the license, we could say something like this: "-- The code must be contributed by or with permission of the original author(s) of the code. Dependencies on 3rd party libraries should be discussed on the dev list, to see how these can be brought into conformance with ASF policy." Regards, -Rob > Regards, > Andrea. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
