May 2016 - legal-discuss - lists.openstack.org

Fwd: [tc][ansible][ironic] Reusing Ansible code in OpenStack projects
by Pavlo Shchelokovskyy 20 May '16

20 May '16

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. 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)? 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? 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

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[keystone] ldappool - using MPL licensed code in-tree
by Steve Martinelli 13 May '16

13 May '16

A bit of background: - In order to make keystone py3 compatible, we have to make our LDAP code compatible - We use two libraries for our LDAP code: python-ldap and ldappool, both are not actively maintained - python-ldap has a py3 port called pyldap. Great! - ldappool does not have a py3 port. With all that said, ldappool is only a few hundred lines of code. Can we pull it in-tree? It looks like ldappool is MPL licensed: Version: MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1 Exact license for ldappool is here: https://github.com/mozilla-services/ldappool/blob/master/ldappool/__init__.… We have a patch that pulls it in tree up for review (with a few changes to make it py3 friendly): https://review.openstack.org/#/c/311827/3/keystone/common/ldap/ldappool.py stevemar

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Licensing for specs repos
by Ben Swartzlander 10 May '16

10 May '16

I started a thread [1] on the dev mailing list but wasn't able to get any helpful answers... The Manila project is creating a new repo for specs, and while looking at what other projects have done for specs repos, I could not figure out which license was being used. It seems that most specs repos (nova, cinder, neutron, contain a mixture of Apache 2.0 licensed stuff and CCBY (Creative Commons) licensed stuff. Some of these repos contain apparently-conflicting license declarations, with CCBY specified in the LICENSE file, but Apache 2.0 specified in the setup.cfg file. In all cases, individual files contain their own license declarations at the top and all of these repos contain some clearly Apache 2.0 licensed files (the python code in the repo) and some CCBY licensed files (the specs themselves). It seems unavoidable that we will have a similar situation in Manila, so I'm trying to figure out what to do at the top level for the LICENSE file and what license to point to in setup.cfg. Is there a way to explain to users that the project contains a mixture of 2 licenses? Is that acceptable or desirable? -Ben Swartzlander Manila PTL [1] http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2016-May/094065.html

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