Hosting a non-official GPLv3 OpenStack project
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]
On 2017-07-24 11:56:36 -0400 (-0400), David Moreau Simard wrote: [...]
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). [...]
That document is specifically about deliverables of official OpenStack project teams. It does not apply to unofficial teams, whose license choices are not particularly regulated (though if we found out someone was hosting development of non-libre software on our infrastructure I'm certain we'd force them to move elsewhere).
While ARA is currently labelled with an Apache 2.0 license, some components of it are coupled to Ansible which is GPLv3. [...]
We even have an official (Infra team) deliverable in the exact same situation today: <URL: http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack-infra/devstack-gate/tree/README.rst?... >
Would this re-licensing mean that ARA could no longer be hosted by the OpenStack community infrastructure ? [...]
There's plenty of unofficial software being developed and hosted by our community infrastructure which doesn't meet our community's various licensing and CLA requirements for official OpenStack deliverables. As long as you're okay with the choice of license and the logistics of getting relicensing approval from your prior contributors, I don't see a problem with it. -- Jeremy Stanley
On 07/25/2017 12:49 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
On 2017-07-24 11:56:36 -0400 (-0400), David Moreau Simard wrote: [...]
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). [...]
That document is specifically about deliverables of official OpenStack project teams. It does not apply to unofficial teams, whose license choices are not particularly regulated (though if we found out someone was hosting development of non-libre software on our infrastructure I'm certain we'd force them to move elsewhere).
While ARA is currently labelled with an Apache 2.0 license, some components of it are coupled to Ansible which is GPLv3. [...]
We even have an official (Infra team) deliverable in the exact same situation today:
<URL: http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack-infra/devstack-gate/tree/README.rst?... >
Would this re-licensing mean that ARA could no longer be hosted by the OpenStack community infrastructure ? [...]
There's plenty of unofficial software being developed and hosted by our community infrastructure which doesn't meet our community's various licensing and CLA requirements for official OpenStack deliverables. As long as you're okay with the choice of license and the logistics of getting relicensing approval from your prior contributors, I don't see a problem with it.
I agree with all of these things.
participants (3)
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David Moreau Simard
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Jeremy Stanley
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Monty Taylor