Hi, Thanks Stefano and Mark for setting up this list. Since I appear to be indirectly to blame for its creation I thought I would provide an initial contribution by addressing the issue Dims asked a couple of days ago on openstack-dev: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2013-April/007778.html As noted by Dims NOTICE files are specifically referred to in the Apache License 2.0 section 4d. I won't quote the whole provision but it begins by saying: If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file .... So it is understood that upstream projects might not use NOTICE files, but in case they do, and they include attribution notices in such a file, then distributed 'Derivative Works' must preserve or include those attribution notices in one of certain specified ways. ASF projects routinely use NOTICE files. The ASF uses them as a centralized place for not just an ASF attribution notice but also any legal notices that must be preserved under third-party licenses. Older ASF projects also include an Apache Software Foundation copyright notice (AIUI the ASF ceased this practice at some point as it came to be seen as controversial since the ASF didn't hold any significant copyright interest in any particular project). It is my experience, however, that very few non-ASF projects using the Apache License 2.0 make use of the NOTICE file mechanism. While there are some nice things about having a centralized file for collecting *third-party* legal notices, such a thing is not necessary (this assumes that any legal notices that have to be preserved in a source distribution are preserved in individual source files). An important exception, probably not relevant and unlikely to be relevant to OpenStack, is if your source code incorporates code from an Apache-licensed project that itself used a NOTICE file. You could use a centralized file to contain any copyright notices from *OpenStack* contributors; this has not been the approach of OpenStack thus far, and is really a separate question. So the question raised by Dims boils down to whether OpenStack projects should include an *OpenStack* attribution notice in top-level NOTICE files. This would presumably be something analogous to standard ASF attribution notices, like: This product includes software developed by the OpenStack Foundation (http://www.openstack.org/). The policy goal in the ASF's case has been to make sure the ASF gets visible credit in cases where downstream distributed products are based in part on ASF code. For OpenStack, thus far it has not been thought important to have any such attribution notice, as with most other non-ASF Apache-licensed projects. I myself don't think it is important so I see no reason to begin deviating from historical OpenStack practice to emulate what the ASF does. But perhaps contributors to OpenStack projects feel otherwise. In a project like OpenStack that does not aggregate copyright ownership (and in which copyright ownership is getting increasingly diverse), perhaps some perceive a value to having an OpenStack-specific attribution notice. I see occasional uses of "Copyright OpenStack Foundation" in source files and I am not clear on whether this signifies code that was originally copyrighted by OpenStack LLC or, instead, some sort of attempt (like the deprecated ASF practice) to provide attribution to the OpenStack Foundation regardless of whether it is actually in any interesting sense a copyright holder. It is also not clear to me that it is *proper* to give attribution to the OpenStack *Foundation*, but that's a project-specific cultural question and I don't have good insight into that. - RF