[Go-essp-tech] [ESG-CET] Gateway open source license

[Ian Foster]

Dear Nathan:

Congratulations on the successful release. The Apache 2.0 license is a good choice, in my opinion.

Regards -- Ian.

On May 19, 2011, at 11:09 PM, Nathan Wilhelmi wrote:

> 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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