| [ve-dev] FW: Eclipse Public License Transition |
|
All
committers please read the following message from the Eclipse Foundation about
the transition to the Eclipse Public License. As requested in this
document, I will coordinate a unified response for all of VE, so please email me
with:
1) a
list of people who has ever contributed code to VE that we have
accepted.
2) If
those people acted on behalf of themselves or their employer
3) If
on behalf of their employer, who that employer is
Also,
if you haven't already, please read the Due Diligence document referenced in the
email below. Due to the legal climate we live in, Eclipse.org is going to
be requiring careful record-keeping of where all code comes from, and this
document is the first that describes some of how this will
happen.
Regards,
Dave
Orme
Eclipse Visual Editor lead
-----Original Message-----
From: Kathleen Barry [mailto:kathleen@xxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 10:18 PM To: DaveO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Eclipse Public License Transition As you may be aware, the Eclipse Foundation is currently transitioning from the Common Public License (CPL) to the Eclipse Public License (EPL). Please consult the FAQ for an explanation of the reasons for this change and more detail on what the move will entail (http://www.eclipse.org/legal/main.html).
As part of this process, the Eclipse Board has decided that current releases of all Eclipse.org projects, as well as any subsequent maintenance updates, will continue to be licensed under the CPL but will also be re-licensed under the EPL. In other words, the content distributed by such development streams will be dual-licensed under both CPL and EPL and recipients can choose the license they wish to apply. This policy is designed to offer maximum flexibility to downstream users of Eclipse technology, and ensure that there is a smooth transition from CPL to EPL licensing. If you believe this approach is problematic for your project, please contact Executive Director Mike Milinkovich (mike.milinkovicg@xxxxxxxxxxx) to obtain an exception from the policy. Every project is important to the Eclipse community, and the Eclipse management team wants to work with you and the PMC to ensure that application of Eclipse Foundations policies is sensible, fair and equitable.
The re-licensing process will require that, for a period of time, all inbound contributions be submitted under both CPL and EPL. The web site Terms of Use will be updated to reflect this change, and all contributors to the current release streams are being contacted to obtain their permission to re-license their contributions. Once the re-licensing process is complete (expected to be some time in 2005), all new inbound contributions for future releases will be licensed solely under the EPL, and the releases themselves will under EPL only. Previous release streams licensed under CPL (e.g. Eclipse 2.x) will continue to be governed by the CPL only.
As noted, the Eclipse Foundation must ensure that all authors of contributions, including both committers and non-committer contributors, agree to re-license their work under the EPL. For those individuals whose contribution was made in the regular course of their employment by an Eclipse Member Organization, their respective employer has or will give consent on their behalf.
However, individual contributors, including committers who are working on Eclipse.org projects as individuals (i.e. not in the course of their regular employment), will need to personally agree to this re-licensing. This is where the Eclipse Foundation urgently needs your help. As a subproject lead, you are the principal contact point for the committers and contributors on your project. We are asking that you forward this message to all committers on your project, asking them to identify any non-committer contributors whose contributions they may have committed. We also need to know whether each committer is acting as an individual or for their employer, and who that employer is in the latter case. If you could coordinate a single response, we would be appreciative as this would help off-load Eclipse Foundation staff. If this is not possible, then please ask the committers to reply directly to Kathleen Barry (kathleen@xxxxxxxxxxx).
It is very important that our list be complete. If a committer is unsure as to whether to submit a particular contributor name, please send it to us anyway along with a short description of the circumstances. We will work with you to ascertain whether this person needs to be contacted.
Once we have obtained this information we will be contacting employers, individual committers and contributors as appropriate to obtain their agreement to re-license their contributions in the current release under the EPL.
You should also be mindful of the need to keep careful record of all contributions on an ongoing basis (including those authored by yourself and those by non-committer contributors) as detailed in the Due Diligence Guidelines for Eclipse.org Committers under the heading "Tracking Contributions". It is important to read this document if you have not already. It can be found at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/committerguidelines.html. At some point in the future, we may institute a universally accessible database to track contributions. To aid in this process, it would be very helpful if you could indicate whether and how you are collecting and documenting this information now.
For your convenience we have summarized our questions:
1. Please provide a current list of committers, their contact information, noting any case where the committer is contributing as an individual. At a minimum contact data should include email address and employer; regular mail address, phone/fax, etc. would be helpful is available. Eclipse will treat this information carefully and will only retain it with consent from the individual.
2. Please list the names and contact information of all non-committer contributors as well as any other pertinent information, especially which modules they worked on and approximately how much code they contributed.
3. How are you currently collecting and storing contact information with regard to non-committer contributors?
4. Is any committer aware of any existing patents relating to his/her contributions or to contributions he/she has committed?
Thank you very much for your assistance. The success of Eclipse has been due largely to the contributions of you and your colleagues. We want you to know that we value your participation and trust that we can count on your continued support.
Yours truly,
Mike Milinkovich
Please direct replies to Kathleen Barry kathleen@xxxxxxxxxxx |