Open Stack

On 02/09/2017 11:46 AM, Foley, Emma L wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> We have had a request from the OPNFV community to relicense the collectd-ceilometer-plugin [1] to prevent potential license conflicts.
>  
> OPNFV [2] produces a set of ISOs which will include collectd [3] and collectd-ceilometer-plugin.
> Some collectd components are GPL v2 licensed, which would cause a conflict at the point of distribution, if both the GPL plugins and the collectd-ceilometer-plugin were enabled by default.

I'm not sure I understand how this creates such a conflict? Aggregation
and distribution does not imply derivation.

> The proposed solution is to change the license of collectd-ceilometer-plugin from Apache V2 to MIT.
> As far as I can see, this is appropriate and will maintain compatibility
> 
> As a consequence of this change, all contributors need to agree to the change.
> I'm currently planning to propose a patch to change the license, and asking all the previous contributors to add a "signed-off-by" line to the commit message to show they consent to the change.
> 
> Are there any issues with the proposed license change?
> Is the proposed method of getting consent suitable?

Yeah - I'm not sure this is that easy. Our current CLA asserts that we
accept contributions under the terms of the Apache License and also that
we distribute them under those terms. I do not believe we can assert
that previous contributors actually have the legal standing to agree to
such a change. Any of their employers who signed the Corporate CLA would
also have to agree, I imagine, and I'm not sure what form that would take.

Additionally, our bylaws state that we distribute code under the terms
of the Apache license. I'm not sure if the collectd-ceilometer-plugin
exists in such a manner (since it's a plugin for collectd) that it could
be considered as a thing separate from us distributing OpenStack - but
I'm 100% positive that Foundation Legal Counsel is the only one who can
say for sure.

Monty

PS. IANAL - obviously