- legal-discuss - lists.openstack.org

Re: [legal-discuss] [tc] OpenStack code and GPL libraries
by Jeremy Stanley 04 Feb '19

04 Feb '19

On 2019-02-04 14:42:04 +0100 (+0100), Ilya Shakhat wrote: > I am experimenting with automatic verification of code licenses of > OpenStack projects and see that one of Rally dependencies has GPL3 > license [...] To start off, it looks like the license for morph is already known to the Rally developers, based on the inline comment for it at https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/rally/tree/requirements.txt?id=362… (so hopefully this is no real surprise). The source of truth for our licensing policies, as far as projects governed by the OpenStack Technical Committee are concerned (which openstack/rally is), can be found here: https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/licensing.html It has a carve out for "tools that are run with or on OpenStack projects only during validation or testing phases of development" which "may be licensed under any OSI-approved license" and since the README.rst for Rally states it's a "tool & framework that allows one to write simple plugins and combine them in complex tests scenarios that allows to perform all kinds of testing" it probably meets those criteria. As for concern that a Python application which imports another Python library at runtime inherits its license and so becomes derivative of that work, that has been the subject of much speculation. In particular, whether a Python import counts as "dynamic linking" in GPL 3.0 section 1 is debatable: https://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/41019-python-gpl https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/how-does-the-gpls-linki… https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87446/using-a-gplv3… https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40492518/is-an-import-in-python-conside… I'm most definitely not a lawyer, but from what I've been able to piece together it's the combination of rally+morph which potentially becomes GPLv3-licensed when distributed, not the openstack/rally source code itself. This is really more of a topic for the legal-discuss mailing list, however, so I am cross-posting my reply there for completeness. To readers only of the legal-discuss ML, the original post can be found archived here: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2019-February/002356… -- Jeremy Stanley

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On the problem of OSF copyright headers
by Jeremy Stanley 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

Just a heads up, the perennial topic of copyright assignment misconceptions has reared its head again. I've posted http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-August/133929.html on the openstack-dev mailing list proposing that we should have somewhere more formal than a wiki article to put the summary for that. -- Jeremy Stanley

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Third party file inclusion in Openstack sushy project
by mail＠clusums.eu 16 Aug '18

16 Aug '18

Hi, I'm working on sushy project[1] and I want to know if I can include some third-party files in the project and distribute the project together with these files. The files in question are JSON files here [2], for example, [3]. They do not have any license specified, but they have "Copyright 2014-2015, 2017 Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF). All rights reserved.". This corresponds to full copyright notice at [4]. The questions: 1) Can I include these files in sushy project as they are? 2) If not, can I process these files automatically using a script and derive some code from these files and include the derived code in sushy project? 3) If not, can I process these files manually and type some code and include the derived code? 4) Is there something else? Regards, Aija [1] https://docs.openstack.org/sushy/latest/ [2] http://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/registries/ [3] http://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/registries/Base.1.2.0.json [4] https://www.dmtf.org/about/policies/copyright

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Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-dev] [tc] [all] TC Report 18-05
by Graham Hayes 30 Jan '18

30 Jan '18

On 30/01/18 18:34, Chris Dent wrote: <snip/> > > ## Today's Board Meeting > > I attended [today's Board > Meeting](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/30Jan2018Boa… > > but it seems that according to the [transparency > policy](http://www.openstack.org/legal/transparency-policy/) I can't > comment: > >> No commenting on Board meeting contents and decisions until >> Executive Director publishes a meeting summary > > That doesn't sound like transparency to me, but I assume there must be > reasons. I was under the assumption that this only applied to board members, but I am open to correction. Can someone on legal-discuss clarify? > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: OpenStack-dev-request@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev >

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[tc][qa] possible license violation in os-faults project
by Pavlo Shchelokovskyy 23 Nov '17

23 Nov '17

Hi all, today I came about what I see as a possible violation of GPLv3 license in openstack/os-faults project. As all other openstack/* projects, openstack/os-faults and all of its code is licensed under Apache v2 license. But the code in os_faults/ansible/executor.py module explicitly imports multiple modules [0] from Ansible, which in turn are licensed under GPLv3 license (example of the first imported module [1]). IANAL, but as far as I understand Apache v2 and GPLv3 licenses are incompatible in this regard. I'd like to be proven wrong, but it seems this code in os-faults must be removed, and if needed rewritten to call out to "ansible" or "ansible-playbook" CLI scripts (and parsing their stdout) instead. [0] http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/os-faults/tree/os_faults/ansible/ex… [1] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.4.1.0-1/lib/ansible/executor/tas… Best regards, -- Dr. Pavlo Shchelokovskyy Senior Software Engineer Mirantis Inc www.mirantis.com

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[tc][kolla] Distribute Ansible module with Kolla
by duonghq＠vn.fujitsu.com 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

Hello everyone, I'm looking for legal advice about distribute Ansible module within Kolla. In order to implement one feature in Kolla, I need developing one Ansible strategy plugin, which in turn need to include and inherit from a couple of modules of Ansible. Kolla does not use the plugin directly, Kolla will invoke Ansible (through popen) and Ansible uses this plugin. The question is, can I distribute this plugin along with Kolla-Ansible deliverable? Thanks, Ha Quang Duong (Mr.) IRC duonghq PODC - Fujitsu Vietnam Ltd.

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License issue & Need help
by HoangCX＠vn.fujitsu.com 26 Jul '17

26 Jul '17

Hi, We are recently trying to propose a Netlink solution [1] in order to improve performance for Neutron's Security Group. Almost the thing is ready to go except for license issue as we are not so familiar with this area. The problem is come from some parts of code we used that based on MIT license (not Apache 2 license). So need to get help for the following points: 1. Can we mix MIT license and Apache 2 license in a same file like [2]? 2. We have LICENSE file at the top directory. Is it okay to have a file with some different license under the tree and publish it as part of neutron distribution? Any feedback and help are really appreciated. [1] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/470911/ [2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/470911/20/neutron/privileged/agent/linux/n… Thanks, Hoang

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Hosting a non-official GPLv3 OpenStack project
by David Moreau Simard 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

Hi, I'm the author of ARA [1] which is not an official OpenStack project: - It is not governed by the OpenStack foundation or the technical committee - It does not require the OpenStack CLA/ICLA for contributions - It is not a deliverable of any OpenStack project For me, ARA falls in the same category of software that was created by the OpenStack community as Jenkins Job Builder [2] and git-review [3]. >From the licensing requirements documentation [4]: > Projects run as part of the OpenStack Infrastructure (in order to produce OpenStack software) may be licensed under any OSI-approved license. > This includes tools that are run with or on OpenStack projects only during validation or testing phases of development (e.g., a source code linter). It would likely fit in what was previously known as "stackforge". While ARA is currently labelled with an Apache 2.0 license, some components of it are coupled to Ansible which is GPLv3. For the purpose of simplicity and avoid headaches around dual licensing (worry about what we are importing where, etc.), I am currently considering re-licensing ARA as GPLv3. Doing this re-licensing now rather than later is desirable before ARA gets too many contributors from different companies which may complicate a re-licensing. My question is the following: Would this re-licensing mean that ARA could no longer be hosted by the OpenStack community infrastructure ? What are other ramifications I might be missing ? Thanks, [1]: https://gihtub.com/openstack/ara [2]: https://github.com/openstack-infra/jenkins-job-builder [3]: https://github.com/openstack-infra/git-review [4]: https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/licensing.html David Moreau Simard Senior Software Engineer | Openstack RDO dmsimard = [irc, github, twitter]

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GPLv2 dependency in puppet-neutron?
by ZZelle 11 Jul '17

11 Jul '17

Hi everyone, While working on puppet-neutron, i discovered that puppet-neutron depends on the sysctl puppet module[1] which is GPLv2 (be careful to not confuse it with another sysctl module[2] which is apache2). This dependency has been added a long time ago (in juno or before). It seems we have a license issue (ie: apache2 code depends on GPLv2 code)? [1] https://github.com/duritong/puppet-sysctl [2] https://github.com/thias/puppet-sysctl Cédric/ZZelle@IRC

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[collectd-ceilometer-plugin][legal] Request to relicense collectd-ceilometer-plugin under MIT license.
by Foley, Emma L 09 Feb '17

09 Feb '17

Hi all, We have had a request from the OPNFV community to relicense the collectd-ceilometer-plugin [1] to prevent potential license conflicts. OPNFV [2] produces a set of ISOs which will include collectd [3] and collectd-ceilometer-plugin. Some collectd components are GPL v2 licensed, which would cause a conflict at the point of distribution, if both the GPL plugins and the collectd-ceilometer-plugin were enabled by default. The proposed solution is to change the license of collectd-ceilometer-plugin from Apache V2 to MIT. As far as I can see, this is appropriate and will maintain compatibility As a consequence of this change, all contributors need to agree to the change. I'm currently planning to propose a patch to change the license, and asking all the previous contributors to add a "signed-off-by" line to the commit message to show they consent to the change. Are there any issues with the proposed license change? Is the proposed method of getting consent suitable? Best regards, Emma [1] http://github.com/openstack/collectd-ceilometer-plugin.git [2] https://www.opnfv.org/ [3] https://collectd.org/ https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/licensing.html -------------------------------------------------------------- Intel Research and Development Ireland Limited Registered in Ireland Registered Office: Collinstown Industrial Park, Leixlip, County Kildare Registered Number: 308263

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