[openstack-dev] [tc][kolla] Ansible module with GPLv3

Jeremy Stanley fungi at yuggoth.org
Fri Nov 4 23:05:54 UTC 2016


On 2016-11-04 22:50:10 +0000 (+0000), Jeremy Stanley wrote:
[...]
> As I understand it, the challenge here is that plugins for Ansible
> will by definition be derivative works of Ansible and thus inherit
> their license choice. No amount of "clean room reimplementation"
> will solve that unless you also reimplement Ansible under a
> different license while you're at it.
[...]

Further research suggests I'm wrong on this front. I was assuming
Ansible was providing a Python plug-in API here, in which case
coding to that would potentially create a derivative work. Instead
it looks like for at least some things they refer to as plug-ins
they pass around a JSON data structure which upstream Ansible has
said in the past they do not consider to result in plug-ins becoming
derivative works of Ansible. For example:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/module_utils/basic.py
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/GLwe3vbwTQk
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/8864

So yes, as long as you don't fork or copy from a GPL'd plug-in, your
plug-in could be implemented in other licenses and could even copy
from Ansible's BSD-licensed basic module example.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley
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