On 2021-03-13 18:03:49 +0100 (+0100), Radosław Piliszek wrote: [...]
The main README suggests everything is GPL in there so I was confused. Perhaps this is what also confused the OP from Launchpad. [...]
I suspect (though do not know for sure) that this is why the Ansible maintainers have moved those files all into a separate directory tree. I would not be surprised if they have plans to move them into a separate repository in the future so as to provide even clearer separation. Some of the copyright license situation in there was murky a few years back, so I expect they're still working to improve things in that regard.
a purist may say that Ansible still "curses" such usage by GPL because, when you import in Python, you are actually executing the __init__s in the context of your software and those are licensed under GPL, especially the root one.
The way this is usually done is via a line like: from ansible.module_utils.basic import AnsibleModule I don't believe that actually loads the GPL-licensed ansible/__init__.py file, but I get a bit lost in the nuances of the several different kinds of Python package namespaces. However (and to reiterate, I'm no lawyer, this is not legal advice) what's generally important to look at in these sorts of situations is intent. Law is not like a computer program, and so strict literal interpretations are quite frequently off-base. It's fairly clear the Ansible authors intend for you to be able to import those scripts from ansible.module_utils in more permissively-licensed programs, so by doing that we're not acting counter to their wishes.
I have missed it. Should we post there? It looks pretty abandoned (perhaps for a good reason ;-) ). [...]
It's infrequently-used because such questions arise infrequently (thankfully). If anyone feels we need to start the process of soliciting an actual legal opinion on these matters though, we should re-raise the topic there initially. But before doing that, check the list archives to make sure we haven't already had this discussion in prior years, and also do a bit of research to see whether the Ansible project has already published documentation about the intended license situation for the files you're concerned about. -- Jeremy Stanley