[INCUBATOR-125] How-to guide for "Assembling LICENSE and NOTICE"

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Implemented
• Component/s: site
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Marvin Humphrey
• Created: 23/Aug/12 17:30
• Updated: 02/Mar/13 23:16
• Resolved: 02/Mar/13 23:16

Description

While the ASF provides reference documentation for LICENSE and NOTICE,
confusion persists and existing versions vary widely in quality.

To address these problems, we should augment the reference documentation with
a "how-to" guide which provides formulaic instructions for assembling LICENSE
and NOTICE under common conditions.

One key feature of this how-to should be a mapping of approved licenses to
what they require as far as NOTICE. This mapping will help PMCs determine
when the licensing information of a dependency contains a "required third
party notice" which must be added to NOTICE.

There are at least four possible locations where this how-to might live:

• www.apache.org/dev/licensing_howto.html – probably the best location,
  considering the intended audience.
• www.apache.org/legal/licensing_howto.html – if legal wants it.
• incubator.apache.org/guides/licensing_howto.html – probably not ideal,
  because the information applies to TLPs as well as podlings and we have a
  problem with duplication.
• Somewhere on community.apache.org – in theory.

Issue Links

• relates to: LEGAL-155 Please help us educate projects about LICENSE and NOTICE