Open Stack

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