Help with legal audit (yes - this is directed to boost!)

From: Sean Parent (sparent_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-28 01:00:33

I'm working to open up Adobe a bit when it comes to contributing to efforts
like boost (boost is my "trial run"). As well as using boost internally. We
do currently contribute some (Mat has done a great job) and some products
are using portions of boost but there isn't any corporate policy which is a
barrier to both contributing and using since it is left to individual
managers and legal representation assigned to each product team.

For contributing I'm working on a simple process so individuals can get
sign-off and can include a standard license (working with legal now to make
sure our license conforms to the boost requirements and I'll post it here
for comment when I have a draft ready).

I'm also looking to have the licenses in the code received from boost to be
"pre-audited" so each product team doesn't have to duplicate effort for a
code audit (all of our sources are audited by legal before any product
release and all license agreements and copyright notices are reviewed and we
do our best to comply with all requirements - or if necessary remove the
code).

For this later part I'm looking to gather a list of all copyrights and
licenses from boost for review. After the first past I'll submit deltas to
legal on a quarterly basis.

The first question - does any one have any good scripts for gathering these
notices and distilling them down to a unique list? We have an in house perl
script that helps but still will require a  _lot_ of hand editing before
handing off to legal.

Second question - would there be any objection to formalizing some
conventions to demarcate copyright notices and name license files? It can be
something very simple - and even if all the contributors didn't follow the
convention it could greatly simplify my efforts.

Thoughts?
Thanks,
Sean

-- 
Sean Parent
Sr. Computer Scientist II
Advanced Technology Group
Adobe Systems Incorporated
sparent_at_[hidden]