Open Stack

On 05/19/2016 12:15 PM, Steven Dake (stdake) wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Pavlo Shchelokovskyy <pshchelokovskyy at mirantis.com
> <mailto:pshchelokovskyy at mirantis.com>>
> Date: Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 5:58 AM
> To: "legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
> <mailto:legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org>"
> <legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
> <mailto:legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org>>
> Subject: [legal-discuss] Fwd: [tc][ansible][ironic] Reusing Ansible code
> in OpenStack projects
> 
>     Hi all,
> 
>     I have a question re FOSS licenses interplay. I am pretty sure that
>     OpenStack community (e.g. openstack-ansible) has already faced such
>     questions and I would really appreciate any advice.
> 
>     We are developing a new ansible-based deployment driver for Ironic
>     [0] and would like to use some parts of ansible-lib Python API to
>     avoid boilerplate code in custom Ansible modules and callbacks we
>     are writing, and in the future probably use Ansible Python API to
>     launch playbooks themselves.

SO - before we get caught up in the legal parts of this.

We started down the path of using the ansible python API in zuul v3 and
it turns out it's not actually particularly pleasant for things like
"please run this playbook". We have moved forward with having zuul v3
use subprocess.Popen to call the ansible-playbook command having written
some content to a temp directory and the results are rather pleasing.

I chatted with Jim about splitting the "please run this ansible playbook
with these variables and this config" into a library. If you've got a
similar usecase elsehwere, maybe making that library is worth discussing
in earnest.

>     The problem is Ansible and ansible-lib in particular are licensed
>     under GPL v3 [1] "or later" [2]. According to [3] Apache 2.0 license
>     is only one way compatible with GPL v3 (GPL v3-licensed code can
>     include Apache 2.0-licensed code, but not vice versa).
> 
>     I am by far not a legal expert, so my questions are:
> 
>     Does it mean that the moment I do "from ansible import ..." in my
>     Python code, which AFAIU means I am "linking" to it, I am required
>     to use a GPLv3-compliant license for my code too (in particular not
>     Apache 2.0)?
> 
> 
> IANAL but yes that is what it means. 

It turns out that there are conflicting opinions on this. There are
people who agree with that, and people who are of the opinion that it
does not constitute linking. I have heard each opinion from lawyers. As
it has never been tested in court, it turns out ALL answers on the
subject are at best educated guesses.

> I'd propose running ansible in a
> subprocess which treats it as a network service since it runs over a
> network (pipe) in a separate process address spce.  From my limited
> understanding this does not cause license contamination.

Yes. Also, I think you'll find that we can collaborate on the mechanics
of this pretty nicely.

>     What problems might that imply in respect with including such code
>     in an OpenStack project (e.g. submitting it to Ironic repo) and
>     distributing the project?
>     If there are indeed problems with that, would it be safer to keep
>     the code in a separate project and also distribute it separately?
>     Even when distributed separately, will merely using (dynamically
>     importing at run-time) a GPLv3-licensed driver from
>     ApacheV2-licensed Ironic constitute any license violation?

There should be no need to avoid ansible code in your modules. There is
an explicit license carve out in ansible for module authors. Can you
provide an example of code you want to use but are concerned about?

>     Note that technically we could avoid re-using Ansible code for
>     Ansible modules and callbacks, just that it would be much-much less
>     convenient.
> 
>     [0] https://review.openstack.org/#/q/topic:bug/1526308
>     [1] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/COPYING
>     [2] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/__init__.py#L8
>     [3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
> 
>     Best regards,
> 
>     Dr. Pavlo Shchelokovskyy
>     Senior Software Engineer
>     Mirantis Inc
>     www.mirantis.com <http://www.mirantis.com>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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