Open Stack

Dear fellow OpenStackers,

it has been brought to my attention that having any (Python) imports
against a GPL lib (e.g Ansible) *might be* considered linking with all
the repercussions of that (copyleft anyone?).

Please see the original thread in Launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/kolla-ansible/+bug/1918663

Not only the projects that have "Ansible" in name might be affected,
e.g. Ironic also imports Ansible parts.

Do note *I am not a lawyer* so I have no idea whether the Python
importing is analogous to linking in terms of GPL. I am only
forwarding the concerns reported to me in Launchpad. A quick Google
search was inconclusive.

I have done some analysis in the original Launchpad thread mentioned
above. I am copying it here for ease of reference.

"""
Hmm, the reasoning is interesting. OpenStack Ansible and TripleO would
probably also be interested in knowing whether GPL violation is
happening or not. I am not in a position to answer this question. I
will propagate this matter to the mailing list:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/
FWIW, TripleO is by Red Hat, just like Ansible, so one would assume
they know what they are doing. OTOH, there is always room for a
mistake.
All in all, end users must use Ansible so they must agree to GPL
anyhow, so the license switch would be mostly cosmetic: +/- the
OpenStack licensing requirements [1].
That said, Ansible Collections for OpenStack are already licensed under GPL [2].
And a related (and very relevant) project using Ansible - Zuul -
includes a note about partial GPL [3].
A quick search [4] reveals a lot of places that could be violating GPL
in OpenStack (e.g. in Ironic, base CI jobs) if we followed this
linking logic.

[1] https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/licensing.html
[2] https://opendev.org/openstack/ansible-collections-openstack
[3] https://opendev.org/zuul/zuul
[4] https://codesearch.opendev.org/?q=(from%7Cimport)%5Cs%2B%5Cbansible%5Cb&i=nope&files=&excludeFiles=&repos=
"""

-yoctozepto