The Legal Affairs Committee

The Legal Affairs Committee is responsible for establishing and managing legal policies based on the advice of legal counsel and the interests of the Foundation

Legal Affairs Committee has been established in March 2007 with the purpose to distribute the legal affairs workload to a coordinated group ASF members, to assign responsibility for legal policy deliberation and decision making to the same group under the supervision of the board, and to provide a structured means of participation and familiarization for those interested in taking over the Legal VP job one day.

Purpose and Intended Audience

This page provides a list of links to various ASF legal pages relevant both to Apache project users and committers.

Notification of Updates to this Page

Updates to this page are sent to the legal-discuss mailing list.

Legal Information for Users of Apache Products

• Apache Licenses

• Records of Incorporation and Tax Status

• Information on encryption within Apache products

• Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines

Legal Policies, Forms, and Information for Apache Committers

• Previously Asked Questions

• Issues List

• Source Header and Copyright Notice Policy

• Contributor License Agreements - FAQ

• Handling Cryptography within an ASF Release

• legal-discuss archives and list info

Historical and background documents

• Ramblings of an ASF VP of Legal Affairs

• Drafted (and out of date) Third-Party Licensing Policy

• Legal Reports to ASF Board

Get in touch

If you want to propose changes or improvements to this documentation follow this guide. If you already read the above documentation and still have doubts or questions you can use these channels:

• Submit issues to the Legal Affair Committee JIRA space

• Post a message to the legal-discuss list

Apache appreciates feedback on our licenses, agreements and processes. Sadly, we are unable to offer legal opinions or advice to the public. For more general information on copyright, patent and trademark law

• the Software Freedom Law Center and
• the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review

have special interests in open source software. Educational material on open source is available from

• the Open Source Initiative and
• OSS Watch.