Re: [boost] Help with legal audit (yes - this is directed to boost!)

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-28 09:38:01

At 01:00 AM 11/28/2001, Sean Parent wrote:

 >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.

I've got the same need as part of the project to come up with a 
"usual"  Boost license.  Let's coordinate privately on this.

(For those who didn't follow the prior discussion, having a "usual" Boost 
license will not prevent a library from having its own license, but it's 
hoped that the majority of Boost libraries will eventually just refer to 
the usual Boost license, with resulting simplification for users.)

 >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.

I'd like to be able (as part of the regular release checklist) to 
automatically scan all boost .cpp and .hpp files to verify they have 
copyright messages and some kind of license or license.  Essentially the 
same need as yours.  So I expect Boost to move in the direction of a 
standard form for the copyright message and reference to license file.

It will be two or three weeks before there is any progress on this from my 
end.

Thanks for your insights.  It's very helpful to find out what licensing 
issues actually come up in practice.

--Beman