One of the Incubator's roles is to ensure that proper attention is paid to intellectual property. From time to time, an external codebase is brought into the ASF that is not a separate incubating project but still represents a substantial contribution that was not developed within the ASF's source control system and on our public mailing lists. This is a short form of the Incubation checklist, designed to allow code to be imported with alacrity while still providing for oversight.

The intent is to simply help to ensure, and record, that due diligence (Software Grant, CLA, Corp CLA, license and dependencies) has been paid to the incoming code, so that it can be merged into an existing project/module. These legal documents are available on the ASF Licenses page.

The receiving PMC is responsible for doing the work. The Incubator is simply the repository of the needed information. Once a PMC directly checks-in a filled-out short form, the Incubator PMC will need to approve the paper work after which point the receiving PMC is free to import the code. Note that only lazy concensus is required. The IP clearance template contains more details of this process.

For new IP clearance forms, start with our XML IP clearance template and follow its instructions. Here is the more readable HTML version.

Additional notes