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

Clint Byrum clint at fewbar.com
Fri Nov 4 23:38:45 UTC 2016


Excerpts from Jeremy Stanley's message of 2016-11-04 23:05:54 +0000:
> 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

Modules are not plugins.

> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/GLwe3vbwTQk

Same here.

> https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/8864

This only refers to dynamic inventory, which is hardly even a plugin
interface.

Strategy plugins run in ansible itself and must import pieces of Ansible,
and thus must be GPLv3:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/lib/ansible/plugins/strategy



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