Rob Weir wrote:
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.
Yes, and I agree that this complexity is already documented in the Apache policy and needn't be explained here: here we are presenting contributions from the developer's point of view; the project's point of view (i.e., how to use contributions effectively) may be more complex and involve coding standards and other best practices, but this is a further step.
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."
I think it's fine to still mention that the contributed code must be under ALv2 or compatible licensing terms: this is a prerequisite. But I like the more flexible phrasing about dependencies.
The solver is a good example: OpenOffice already had the solver, but it was relying on incompatible libraries; and the project didn't rewrite the solver, it merely modified it to work with compatible libraries. A similar scenario would be considered if we receive some outstanding contribution having incompatible dependencies, so it's good to rectify this.
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