[Go-essp-tech] Gateway open source license
Nathan Wilhelmi
wilhelmi at ucar.edu
Thu May 19 22:09:55 MDT 2011
Hi Colleagues,
Back in April we announced the 1.3-M4 release of the gateway, including
mention that the Apache 2.0 license had been applied to the codebase.
Not everyone noticed that, so we summarized that at the GO-ESSP event
last week and wanted to note it here as well.
It was a surprising amount of work to get this done. We considered
various open source models and licenses, working with our legal counsel
throughout the process. This resulted in having to review 130+ third
party code licenses for distribution/usage rights and license
compatibility. We had to replace a few components along the way. At this
point, we feel confident that due diligence has been done.
As many of you are probably aware research institutions are coming under
increased scrutiny for export control compliance. NCAR is no exception,
during this process we also had to go through an export control review
as the code contained encryption libraries.
Much has been drawn from the Apache Foundation, including the
development of a simplified Contributor License Agreement (CLA). There
have been a few questions about this, so I wanted to explain a bit. It
basically protects and benefits all parties as well as the community
code. It ensures that contributions from multiple organizations can be
modified as needed and distributed to the community. It also removes the
need for a contributor to assign copyright to another organization.
Instead, the contributor simply provides permission to include their
contribution while retaining copyright _and_ the right to use the
contribution for their own purposes freely. Again, thanks to Apache for
this nice instrument.
If you have any questions or comments, please let us know.
Thanks!
-Nate
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