[License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

Mon May 25 20:40:05 UTC 2015

Hen, the OSI task of license analysis in this context is trivial. ALL FOSS license are compatible with ALv2 for aggregations.

But today is a US holiday, so let's give some OSI board members an opportunity to comment.

/Larry

From: Henri Yandell [mailto:bayard at apache.org] 
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 12:24 PM
To: Lawrence Rosen; license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

I don't see how you are going to do that unless the OSI are going to maintain complex lists. 

If this is "the OSI are launching a license compatibility service", then there would be something to discuss at Apache. As it is, your proposal is becoming well trod ground around moving B(inary-only) list licenses to A(ttribution).

Hen

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

Hen,

An important part of the proposed Apache Third Party License Policy is that we finally leave the sad domain of FOSS license compatibility determination to our friends and experts at OSI.

If we have a question about whether a specific FOSS license "infects" Apache code, ask OSI at license-discuss at opensource.org <mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org> . That's not ASF's expertise. Our PMCs and certainly our board of directors are not qualified to maintain complex "A, B and X" lists of FOSS licenses and exceptions.

And so in open source, different organizations can play their own important roles in our ecosystem. All this without turning one FOSS developer against another FOSS developer here at Apache merely because of their choice of wonderful FOSS license.

/Larry

From: Henri Yandell [mailto:bayard at apache.org <mailto:bayard at apache.org> ] 
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 11:12 AM
To: ASF Legal Discuss; Lawrence Rosen

Subject: Re: Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

Your original proposal was (quoting the heart of it; for any readers not familiar refer back to the whole email):

Proposal: "Apache projects may accept contributions under ANY OSI-approved open source license. Such software may now be included in Apache aggregations that, as described above, will be licensed to the public under Apache License 2.0."

An exception has evolved through the course of these threads, namely that GPL/AGPL versions are an exception to that and not covered. That also means a policy cannot approve 'ANY' as it's unknown what the next licence on the list would be.

At this point the conversation is:

a) Removal of particular licenses on the 'cannot be used' list that are on the OSI list. I think that's LGPL, QPL and Sleepycat licences. I don't think either of the latter are used on software today, so I don't see a need to do that. There are other licences on the OSI list that we don't have covered, so it's possible there are some we would consider on the 'cannot be used' list. This should become a thread on moving LGPL licences to either the 'weak copyleft -> binary only' or 'can be used' list. The former makes more sense.

b) Moving the 'weak copyleft -> binary only' licences to the 'can be used' list. That's a worthwhile proposal, but one that should take a pause and restart. Starting with CDDL/EPL/MPL would make sense as the most popular on that list (possibly individually). A lot of our use of those licences is binary, so having that position has not been as impactful as might be imagined at first. 

Hen

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

Sam Ruby wrote:
> You may not have been aware that it is an ASF problem to worry about whether downstream distributors can make derivative works -- Free and proprietary alike -- of our projects, but it is true.  As such, we care very much about the kind of dependencies a project takes on, and the license of code that we bundle.

Sam, of course I'm aware of that. That is precisely why I am requesting that you change that antiquated policy.

Please remember, EVERYONE can make derivative works (free and proprietary alike) of Apache projects even if that software includes EPL and MPL works. What they can't do is to refuse to distribute derivative works of EPL and MPL components under their original licenses. That is a reciprocal requirement. But it doesn't prevent derivative works.

> EPL and MPL fall someplace in between.

In between what and what?

I've been challenged repeated here because certain GPL folks don't want their license interpreted this way. So if Apache changes its obsolete policy for every FOSS license except the GPL, I'll consider that a significant accomplishment. I'll wait impatiently for the lawyers who are trying to create a licensing exception for those GPL licensors that DO want their works incorporated into Apache projects.

> And with that, I believe we have covered why the three categories in the third partly licensing policy can not be collapsed into one category.

No we haven't settled that at all. :-)

/.Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Ruby [mailto:rubys at intertwingly.net <mailto:rubys at intertwingly.net> ]
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 4:54 AM
To: Legal Discuss; Lawrence Rosen

Subject: Re: Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

And with that, I believe we have covered why the three categories in the third partly licensing policy can not be collapsed into one category.

> I wasn't aware that it is an Apache problem to worry about whether downstream distributors want to make proprietary derivative works of EPL components. They can always talk to the Eclipse Foundation about that.

You may not have been aware that it is an ASF problem to worry about whether downstream distributors can make derivative works -- Free and proprietary alike -- of our projects, but it is true.  As such, we care very much about the kind of dependencies a project takes on, and the license of code that we bundle.

While you may disagree, it is widely believed that the GPL does not meet your personal definition of Free software.  While others use different terms, the conclusion is creating software that makes direct use of GPL software (for example, in a non-optional and non-pluggable
manner) would make creating proprietary derivative works of our projects problematic.

As you cite, there are no such problems with licenses like BSD (at least the newer versions) or MIT licenses.

EPL and MPL fall someplace in between.

- Sam Ruby

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