Add apache 2.0 license which aligns to ros2

[gaoethan]

Include Apache 2.0 license to align with ros2

Signed-off-by: Ethan Gao ethan.gao@linux.intel.com

[mikaelarguedas]

Thanks @gaoethan to keep pushing for ROS2 support!

However the code in this repository is licensed under the BSD license.
I see that you relicensed the packages and the code it contains to Apache 2.0. I believe this cannot be done without the approval of the original authors.
Please consider reverting the license changes.
You can refer to existing ROS 1 packages ported to ROS2 to see how the licence and copyright are preserved: e.g. pluginlib

In the same line of thought, there is existing code that didnt have a licence or copyright notice in it. I see that this has been licenced Apache 2.0 and copyright to Intel.
As this code was written before the ros2 branch was created. It was written under the BSD licence and the copyright should go to the original author. I encourage your to reach out to the original authors of these files to set a copyright and licence that reflects the context in which the code was developed.

Thanks!

[tfoote]

Somewhat related we generally recommend our development process to include a review of all changes by a second person. It looks like this PR was opened and merged immediately by the original author and didn't pass the Continuous Integration test before merging either.
log

[gaoethan]

@mikaelarguedas Thanks for your advice ! it makes sense to keep the original license of the code. so let me double confirm the following for ROS2:

1. For the code ported to ROS2, it should keep its original license and no need to align to Apache 2.0 license which is using in ROS2
2. For the code which is written totally from scratch, it works to license with Apache 2.0 in ROS2.

[gaoethan]

@tfoote The CI issue here is another issue I've already mentioned long time ago, because the CI backend here targets to the original ROS but not for ROS2, it fails for ROS2 branch commits unless the ROS2 branch can leverage official ROS2 CI backend. thanks !

[mikaelarguedas]

For the code ported to ROS2, it should keep its original license and no need to align to Apache 2.0 license which is using in ROS2
For the code which is written totally from scratch, it works to license with Apache 2.0 in ROS2.

👍 that sounds about right.

I would add a subbullet in 1.

• New code / new files written from scratch and added to an existing package should use the same license as the rest of the package (the one listed in the package.xml's license tag)

[gaoethan]

@mikaelarguedas sure. I'll tweak it to reflect that, thanks !