[legal-discuss] Third party file inclusion in Openstack sushy project

Allison Randal allison at lohutok.net
Mon Aug 13 14:01:16 UTC 2018


Hi Aija,

Take a look at the Apache Software Foundation's notes on compatibility
for CC BY:

https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-b

The short version is that they consider CC BY compatible for including
in Apache 2.0 licensed codebases, but view it as different enough to be
worth some caution, and specifically:

- they only include CC BY code in binary form (which doesn't make any
sense here, since there is no binary form for the DMTF data files)
- they provide a prominent notice of the different licensing for any
files under CC BY

What this means for you is that your current method of having the users
download and install the files manually is totally fine with a CC BY
license, it grants all the permissions the users need. You could also
set up some tools to automatically download and install the files as
part of the sushy installation process, as we talked about earlier in
this email thread, and that would be totally fine with a CC BY license.
Committing the DMTF files to a sushy git repository is more complicated,
and while it may be fine, it's more of a legal gray area, so Mark
Radcliffe would need to review and determine whether OpenStack
Foundation can do that, and if so what additional notices or limitations
should be applied to those files (similar to how the Apache Software
Foundation requires the prominent notice, etc).


The reason no CC licenses appear on the OSI approved list is that the
OSI only reviews open source software licenses, and the CC licenses
aren't for software, they're for content (like images, text, data, etc).
Some CC licenses are compatible with some OSI approved software licenses.

Allison

On 08/13/2018 02:57 PM, mail at clusums.eu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> DMTF is looking at CC BY. Is that OK? It allows commercial use.
> 
> When I'm looking at OSI approved licenses[1], CC does not come up. Is
> there a reason why?
> 
> And about the file inclusion - FYI, in current version users will have
> to download the files themselves and configure sushy to the location
> where they are downloaded. This is not very user-friendly, and in future
> we might look at improving this somehow given that we also cannot always
> rely on users having access to the Internet during installation to
> download the files automatically. But for now this is how it will work.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Aija
> 
> [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
> 
> On 07/30/2018 06:25 PM, Allison Randal wrote:
>> Well, documents are copyrighted just like code, so DMTF would need to
>> say what license they're releasing the documents under. Creative Commons
>> licenses are popular for documents and data. Some Creative Commons
>> licenses are compatible with Apache 2.0 (make sure it isn't one of the
>> "Non-Commercial" variants).
>>
>> You're still better off having users download the DMTF files separately.
>> And, no matter how the users get the files, DMTF needs to release the
>> files under some form of open content or open data license, so the users
>> have permission to use the files.
>>
>> Allison
> 
> 
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