Open Stack

On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 09:43:37PM +0000, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2015-05-06 17:21:09 -0400 (-0400), Richard Fontana wrote:
> Thanks again--I had indeed forgotten there was some additional
> explanation of the differences in that article. It's still vague
> insofar as it states that the OpenStack ICLA is structured in a way
> so as to not place "certain conditions" on the OpenStack Foundation
> (as compared to a basic grant of the contribution to them under the
> Apache License) but doesn't indicate what those omitted conditions
> are.

Apache License 2.0 section 4, and I suppose in theory section 9.

You could argue that the inclusion or omission of such conditions is
not very significant, but that raises the question of why you need a
lopsided two-license structure. (Mark Radcliffe has argued that the
Apache License 2.0 text assumes the use of CLA licenses flowing to a
foundation entity which then grants sublicenses downstream under the
Apache License. I don't agree with this but I won't start that debate
again here.)

> It also mentions additional "legal burdens" on OpenStack
> contributors without enumerating them. Ultimately I worry that
> pointing someone there will raise more questions than it answers. I
> could guess at them, based on a lay reading of the agreement, but
> perhaps that's the intent of the article after all.

It's fairly straightforward; see paragraphs 4, 5, 7 and 8 of the
OpenStack ICLA.

> Probably my greatest confusion is whether these differences over the
> Apache License have actually been leveraged to date, or are so far
> merely unexercised. The way in which the OpenStack Foundation
> "releases" OpenStack software hasn't (yet!) seemed contradictory to
> typical methods used by other software projects with similar
> licenses and no CLA.

Right; by itself this is not a particularly strong argument against
the use of the CLAs in OpenStack, and is not really central to the
objections to it. That's actually why the wiki article didn't go into
those details, frankly, with respect to my contributions to it; I
thought it would detract from the main argument.

I don't think the OpenStack Foundation has 'leveraged' the different
nature of the CLA license grant, except possibly in re-licensing of
documentation from the Apache License to CC BY.

RF