Open Stack

>   On 3/20/14, 8:22 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 08:22:12AM +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> >> I'm no fan (personally) of AGPLv3, but taking a stance that there must
> >> be a way of deploying OpenStack in production without requiring any
> >> AGPLv3 code to be deployed is a significant policy decision for the
> >> project and I don't think we've ever articulated the reasons clearly for
> >> it.
> > Such a policy would be unprecedented for any Apache License 2.0
> > project as far as I am aware. For comparisons look at the legal
> > policies of the Apache Software Foundation, which don't go this far.
> >
> Such a policy needs to be made on a project-by-project basis, as well,
> especially w/r/t AGPL code. MongoDB/10Gen has communicated very clearly
> where they consider their copyright boundary to exist, and I believe
> that legally that functions as a waiver/license if they would ever end
> up being wrong (which I don't think they would, as I believe a network
> communication creates a copyright boundary).
> Thanks,
> Van

The ASF has been dealing with optional dependencies and their license
interactions with the Apache License for a long time.  They have
formed at the least more "in depth" documentation on how all of it
interacts, specifically as it relates to the issues presented here, I
think it is reasonable to refer to:

http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#optional

"Will the majority of users want to use my product without adding the
optional components?"

This is clearly false in the case of Marconi as it stands today.
MongoDB might be "optional", but it is the only realistic choice.

An additional document that hasn't quite moved all the way through the
ringer, and hence still "proposed" at the ASF is this one:

https://www.apache.org/legal/3party.html

The contents of the Guiding Principles seem perfectly aligned with OpenStack.

I think it also does a good job of laying out both groups of licenses
based on their properties, and how projects can depend on or build
modules with mixed license dependencies.  Things like classifying
"System Requirements" are a good fit for projects like Nova, which
have many plugins for restricted licensed Hypervisors for example.

I would love to help see this kind of documentation get added to the
Legal FAQ / references for OpenStack.  What is the best set of actions
to get there?  Port the "LegalIssuesFAQ"[1] to a git report and start
proposing changes in a Code Review?

Thanks,

Paul


[1] - https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LegalIssuesFAQ