Open Stack

Excerpts from Pavlo Shchelokovskyy's message of 2016-05-19 15:28:03 +0300:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a question re FOSS licenses interplay. I am pretty sure that
> OpenStack community (e.g. openstack-ansible) has already faced such
> questions and I would really appreciate any advice.
> 
> We are developing a new ansible-based deployment driver for Ironic [0] and
> would like to use some parts of ansible-lib Python API to avoid boilerplate
> code in custom Ansible modules and callbacks we are writing, and in the
> future probably use Ansible Python API to launch playbooks themselves.
> 
> The problem is Ansible and ansible-lib in particular are licensed under GPL
> v3 [1] "or later" [2]. According to [3] Apache 2.0 license is only one way
> compatible with GPL v3 (GPL v3-licensed code can include Apache
> 2.0-licensed code, but not vice versa).
> 
> I am by far not a legal expert, so my questions are:
> 
> Does it mean that the moment I do "from ansible import ..." in my Python
> code, which AFAIU means I am "linking" to it, I am required to use a
> GPLv3-compliant license for my code too (in particular not Apache 2.0)?
> What problems might that imply in respect with including such code in an
> OpenStack project (e.g. submitting it to Ironic repo) and distributing the
> project?

I'm not an expert on the interpretation of what "linking" is when it
comes to Python apps, but we have a policy that OpenStack projects are
not allowed to depend on GPL libraries [1]. So I think you can't do what you
want, because of that policy.

[1] http://governance.openstack.org/reference/licensing.html

> If there are indeed problems with that, would it be safer to keep the code
> in a separate project and also distribute it separately?
> Even when distributed separately, will merely using (dynamically importing
> at run-time) a GPLv3-licensed driver from ApacheV2-licensed Ironic
> constitute any license violation?

Distribution isn't the only issue, it's how the code is executed.

> 
> Note that technically we could avoid re-using Ansible code for Ansible
> modules and callbacks, just that it would be much-much less convenient.

Unfortunately I think you're going to have to do the less convenient
thing this time.

Doug

> 
> [0] https://review.openstack.org/#/q/topic:bug/1526308
> [1] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/COPYING
> [2] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/__init__.py#L8
> [3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Dr. Pavlo Shchelokovskyy
> Senior Software Engineer
> Mirantis Inc
> www.mirantis.com