Re: bsd license question

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik <dirkx@webweaving.org>]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Ben Goren wrote:

> On 2005 Feb 28, at 2:00 PM, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
>
> > So how do we reword or rework clause 3 to solve this - while at the
> > same
> > time effectively blocking the submarine patent attempts which have
> > plagued
> > us so much in the past ?
>
> Simple. Get a properly executed legal contract with each of your
> contributors before accepting their code.

As you propably know - this is exactly what the ASF alredy does with
anyone who gets commit access (the CLA) and with any companies
contributing. Which is, with active developers running in the thousand,and
a history of some 10 years, quite a burden and a large pile op paper.

> There's no reason that clause should be in the license

So you are arguing that for any and all contributions - even those coming
inn through the mailing lists and bug trackers one would need a CLA on
file in that case as to assure no submnarine issues.

And would you then -still- keep any of the contributor text in the license
(e.g. just removing the last line of clause 3) ?

Given the fact that if there was -NO- such clause 3 the situation one
would still have to knock on the door of the ASF as opposed to $foo -
would a change in the last line of clause 3 to make the ASF excempt of
this exclusion help ?

Dw.