The apology line forms on the left. Please take a number.

The Article said:

"That, of course, is an entirely non-free license header. Interestingly, over 2,000 of those files also have headers indicating that they are distributable under the GNU Lesser General Public License (version 3). These files, in other words, contain conflicting license information but neither case (proprietary or LGPLv3) is consistent with the Apache license. So it would not be entirely surprising to see a bit of confusion over what IBM has really donated. "

Sure... _nothing_ to do with license clarity... at all!

To summarize:

1/ IBM and Apache announce that they have signed a secret legal document
2/ IBM PR announce that they have donnated something called 'Symphony' under AL2 license. Since the document describing what 'Symphony' actually _is_ is 'private, for all we know, what is cover be a Basic Applesoft program that play Beethoven 9th.
3/ An IBM employee dump a bunch of files with random license headers.
4/ Rob, another IBM employee claim that none knows what's in it until some undisclosed uniquely qualified person spend the time to 'inspect' it.
Of course according to Apache's own policy, apache membera shall not touch the license/copyright header unless he is the owner... add to that that non-apache member have no access to the secret license document, so would be incapable of 'inspecting' the code's license in the first place. Which lead with the practical limitation that only IBM employees could safely touch that code...

5/ So in conclusion IBM has granted a license to Apache to make some publicly undisclosed list of file available under AL2. but in the end it is practically still only available to IBM.

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1/ IBM has a private Island in the Bahamas...
2/ IBM announce in PR campaign that, in a burst of generosity, now the public will be allowed to visit the island.
3/ but... to visit you must first acquire the Island nationality, which can only be done via a Work visa and 3 years of continuous work on the island next to it... which happen also to be owned by IBM.