Problem statement

Based on the feedback from ASF on our vote to release MXNet v1.9.0.rc7, we still have a few licensing issues that caused a -1 vote, which prevents us from moving forward with the release.

Based on the RC7 voting thread, the following licensing issues are still outstanding:

• Files incorrectly have ASF headers. These files are all copyrighted by NumPy developers and released under the 3-clause BSD license. We should not have added the ASF header and kept the original license headers intact, and mention this by including it in the "3-clause BSD license" section in LICENSE.

  • src/operator/numpy/np_einsum_op.cc
  • src/operator/numpy/np_einsum_op-inl.h
  • src/operator/numpy/np_einsum_path_op-inl.h

• Some files are not correctly listed in LICENSE. For example, these files contain a "Copyright Microsoft" line but are released under ASF-2 or MIT license. These need to be properly mentioned in LICENSE:

  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_psroi_pooling.cu
  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_psroi_pooling-inl.h
  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_psroi_pooling.cc
  • src/operator/contrib/multi_proposal-inl.h
  • src/operator/contrib/multi_proposal.cc
  • src/operator/contrib/multi_proposal.cu
  • src/operator/contrib/psroi_pooling.cc
  • src/operator/contrib/psroi_pooling.cu
  • Additional files in the same situation as above (identified by running skywalking-eyes):
  • src/operator/contrib/psroi_pooling-inl.h
  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_convolution-inl.h
  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_convolution.cc
  • src/operator/contrib/deformable_convolution.cu

As ASF noted, not all files were checked and there could be others that are missed. In order to better identify licensing issues in the future, we should extend the use of automated tools (such as skywalking-eyes).

• Update our CI pipelines to utilize the latest Apache tool for license checks (skywalking-eyes)
• Update our automated tools to detect files that have multiple license headers
• Create/extend current tool(s) to ensure files are correctly listed in the correct section in LICENSE #20723
• Properly document 3rd-party files/symlinks in include directory in LICENSE

References

• RC7 Voting Thread: https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r5789f5d93716d9d710b855775e71e4892fd37e41338c70c0855958ad%40%3Cgeneral.incubator.apache.org%3E