Open Stack

The problem with AGPL is that the scope is very uncertain and the determination of the  consequences are very fact intensive. I was the chair of the User Committee in developing the GPLv3 and I am therefor quite familiar with the legal issues.  The incorporation of AGPLv3 code Into OpenStack Project  is a significant decision and should not be made without input from the Foundation. At a minimum, the inclusion of APLv3 code means that the OpenStack Project is no longer solely an Apache v2 licensed project because AGPLv3 code cannot be licensed under Apache v. 2 License.  Moreover, the inclusion of such code is inconsistent with the current CLA provisions. 

This code can be included but it is an important decision that should be made carefully.   

-----Original Message-----
From: Fox, Kevin M [mailto:Kevin.Fox at pnnl.gov] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:39 PM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Cc: legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-dev] [Marconi] Why is marconi a queue implementation vs a provisioning API?

Its my understanding that the only case the A in the AGPL would kick in is if the cloud provider made a change to MongoDB and exposed the MongoDB instance to users. Then the users would have to be able to download the changed code. Since Marconi's in front, the user is Marconi, and wouldn't ever want to download the source. As far as I can tell, in this use case, the AGPL'ed MongoDB is not really any different then the GPL'ed MySQL in footprint here. MySQL is acceptable, so why isn't MongoDB?

It would be good to get legal's official take on this. It would be a shame to make major architectural decisions based on license assumptions that turn out not to be true. I'm cc-ing them.

Thanks,
Kevin
________________________________________
From: Chris Friesen [chris.friesen at windriver.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:24 PM
To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Marconi] Why is marconi a queue implementation vs a provisioning API?

On 03/19/2014 02:24 PM, Fox, Kevin M wrote:
> Can someone please give more detail into why MongoDB being AGPL is a 
> problem? The drivers that Marconi uses are Apache2 licensed, MongoDB 
> is separated by the network stack and MongoDB is not exposed to the 
> Marconi users so I don't think the 'A' part of the GPL really kicks in 
> at all since the MongoDB "user" is the cloud provider, not the cloud end user?

Even if MongoDB was exposed to end-users, would that be a problem?

Obviously the source to MongoDB would need to be made available (presumably it already is) but does the AGPL licence "contaminate" the Marconi stuff?  I would have thought that would fall under "mere aggregation".

Chris

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