[License-discuss] License-discuss Digest, Vol 92, Issue 3

Fri Nov 8 16:44:27 UTC 2019

Dear Antonie,

> However, there are a few libraries distributed with the Apache v2 license,
> and, currently, we are not sure if this is ok to ship them in the
> PrestaShop installer. We know that Magento, who uses OSL too, are shipping
> Apache v2 libraries, like some from Elastic. So, it might be good. But,
our
> legal team can't find a clear confirmation that this is possible, and that
> it does not represent a compliance failure.

I am an attorney, but not licensed to practice law in France, so the
following does not constitute legal advice. Several licenses have been
drafted in the United States of America with the help of US Attorneys, or
by US attorneys. Therefore, most of its interpretation is under US Law.
Even though that, and despite the differences or similarities between legal
systems and legislations, very, unfortunately, these laws and its
interpretation are not equal in all countries. Furthermore, in the Open
Source Licensing, you may know that opinions differ even within borders,
from the copyright holder of the license and the copyright holders of the
technology. Thus, it is not an easy task. I think that you have already a
response below, but it would be up to your legal department to move forward
only with that. An email, even from one of the most knowledge open-source
attorney, it could or not be enough for your legal department, most when
even the Apache and the OSL Licenses should be reviewed under the French
Law. But if the company that you work for put their attorney to talk with
an expert, they can solve the local law interpretation issue -if any-.Under
that perspective, your Legal depart shall be covered, since it counts with
a legal opinion signed by a well-versed attorney. For instance, in my
country, Argentina, with have some specialties about how contract (licenses
is a contract for us) must be interpreted. And these are regulated in our
civil code. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that form the legal
practical perspective the best way to approach with an internal legal
department is just to provide the name to who they should talk in case they
are uncertain about. Thanks, Gustavo.

> When I read your interview, and other documents about OSL, my feeling is
> that the OSL allows to distribute the code with any aggregated software
> (e.g dependencies), and does not require to change their license. And
that,
> of course, only derivative work of the code in OSL must be in OSL. But, I
> am not a lawyer, and our legal team is looking for a clear statement.

El vie., 8 nov. 2019 a las 12:53, <
license-discuss-request at lists.opensource.org> escribió:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: OSL, Apache and PrestaShop (Lawrence Rosen)
>    2. Re: OSL, Apache and PrestaShop (Antoine Thomas)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2019 07:36:13 -0800
> From: "Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> To: "'Antoine Thomas'" <antoine.thomas at prestashop.com>
> Cc: <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org>, "Lawrence Rosen"
>         <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] OSL, Apache and PrestaShop
> Message-ID: <003001d5964a$419aada0$c4d008e0$@rosenlaw.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear Antoine,
>
>
>
> I saw your posting on license-discuss@ and read your email below. You are
> perfectly right: There is no problem aggregating Apache and OSL code. Both
> licenses allow it. I stand completely by my earlier blog posting on this
> topic.
>
>
>
> I remain surprised that there was any reluctance even for non-lawyers to
> confirm that on license-discuss at . Both licenses are perfectly clear that
> only derivative works of OSL must be released under the OSL, and ASL
> doesn't care at all.
>
>
>
> Best regards, Larry
>
>
>
> Lawrence Rosen
>
> Rosenlaw ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com/> www.rosenlaw.com)
>
> LinkedIn: LawrenceRosen
>
> 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
>
> Cell: 707-478-8932
>
> This email is licensed under  <
> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/> CC-BY-4.0. Please copy
> freely.
>
>
>
> From: Antoine Thomas <antoine.thomas at prestashop.com>
> Sent: Friday, November 8, 2019 4:28 AM
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
> Subject: OSL, Apache and PrestaShop
>
>
>
> Dear Lawrence,
>
>
>
> I am contacting you for in the past, you have answered an interview about
> the OSL and the AFL published on PrestaShop blog (
> https://www.prestashop.com/en/blog/interview-lawrence-rosen-author-open-software-licence
> )
>
>
>
> In this interview, you state that, I quote, "The OSL/AFL licenses intend
> to eliminate such confusion. These licenses do not affect independently
> written code at all, no matter how aggregated." And, at PrestaShop, we
> would need to have a few precisions.
>
>
>
> To give you a bit of context, I am currently working for the PrestaShop
> company, and I do my best to study and improve the maturity of the
> PrestaShop project, with the support of our legal team, the developers, and
> other teams. One of the big taks is the legal compliance: this topic is
> more and more important today, because more and more companies want to use
> open source software, but they don't want to take risks for their business.
> So, after a review of the license all the dependencies and sub-dependencies
> of the project, we found that most are distributed with MIT or BSD.
>
>
>
> However, there are a few libraries distributed with the Apache v2 license,
> and, currently, we are not sure if this is ok to ship them in the
> PrestaShop installer. We know that Magento, who uses OSL too, are shipping
> Apache v2 libraries, like some from Elastic. So, it might be good. But, our
> legal team can't find a clear confirmation that this is possible, and that
> it does not represent a compliance failure.
>
>
>
> When I read your interview, and other documents about OSL, my feeling is
> that the OSL allows to distribute the code with any aggregated software
> (e.g dependencies), and does not require to change their license. And that,
> of course, only derivative work of the code in OSL must be in OSL. But, I
> am not a lawyer, and our legal team is looking for a clear statement.
>
>
>
> That is why, recently, I sent a question about this problem to the OSI
> mailing list, where the answer was, to make it short: "ask a lawyer". Then,
> I thought that you were certainly the best person to confirm what is the
> right way to aggregate libraries in an OSL project, and what are the
> compatible licenses. And so, in a way, that would also clarify what you
> told in this old interview.
>
>
>
> So, if you could provide some clarification in an answer, or links to
> already existing resources, that would be a great help for the PrestaShop
> project and its users.
>
>
>
> Of course, if you need more details or information, please let know. I
> will be available.
>
>
>
> Looking forward to hearing from you,
>
>
>
> Antoine
>
>
>
>
>
>  <
> https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures>
>
>
> Antoine Thomas aka ttoine
>
> Developer Advocate
>
> t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
>
>  <mailto:antoine.thomas at prestashop.com> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
>
>
>
>
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2019 16:52:21 +0100
> From: Antoine Thomas <antoine.thomas at prestashop.com>
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
> Cc: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] OSL, Apache and PrestaShop
> Message-ID:
>         <CAAJ8xWc-xGYb9oj-_yqeBtLc4u6bd_-V_4Q-jhgVE=
> QBs5RF7Q at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear Larry,
>
> Thank you very much for your answer. I will forward your email to our legal
> team, and add Apache v2 to the list of cleared licenses.
>
> Have a nice weekend,
>
> Antoine
>
>
>
> [image: PrestaShop]
> <
> https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures
> >
>
> Antoine Thomas aka ttoine
>
> Developer Advocate
>
> t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
>
> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 8 Nov 2019 at 16:36, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>
> > Dear Antoine,
> >
> >
> >
> > I saw your posting on license-discuss@ and read your email below. You
> are
> > perfectly right: There is no problem aggregating Apache and OSL code.
> Both
> > licenses allow it. I stand completely by my earlier blog posting on this
> > topic.
> >
> >
> >
> > I remain surprised that there was any reluctance even for non-lawyers to
> > confirm that on license-discuss at . Both licenses are perfectly clear that
> > only *derivative works* of OSL must be released under the OSL, and ASL
> > doesn't care at all.
> >
> >
> >
> > Best regards, Larry
> >
> >
> >
> > Lawrence Rosen
> >
> > Rosenlaw (www.rosenlaw.com)
> >
> > LinkedIn: LawrenceRosen
> >
> > 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
> >
> > Cell: 707-478-8932
> >
> > This email is licensed under CC-BY-4.0
> > <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>. Please copy freely.
> [image:
> > https://licensebuttons.net/l/by/4.0/88x31.png]
> >
> >
> >
> > *From:* Antoine Thomas <antoine.thomas at prestashop.com>
> > *Sent:* Friday, November 8, 2019 4:28 AM
> > *To:* lrosen at rosenlaw.com
> > *Subject:* OSL, Apache and PrestaShop
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Lawrence,
> >
> >
> >
> > I am contacting you for in the past, you have answered an interview about
> > the OSL and the AFL published on PrestaShop blog (
> >
> https://www.prestashop.com/en/blog/interview-lawrence-rosen-author-open-software-licence
> > )
> >
> >
> >
> > In this interview, you state that, I quote, "The OSL/AFL licenses intend
> > to eliminate such confusion. These licenses do not affect independently
> > written code at all, no matter how aggregated." And, at PrestaShop, we
> > would need to have a few precisions.
> >
> >
> >
> > To give you a bit of context, I am currently working for the PrestaShop
> > company, and I do my best to study and improve the maturity of the
> > PrestaShop project, with the support of our legal team, the developers,
> and
> > other teams. One of the big taks is the legal compliance: this topic is
> > more and more important today, because more and more companies want to
> use
> > open source software, but they don't want to take risks for their
> business.
> > So, after a review of the license all the dependencies and
> sub-dependencies
> > of the project, we found that most are distributed with MIT or BSD.
> >
> >
> >
> > However, there are a few libraries distributed with the Apache v2
> license,
> > and, currently, we are not sure if this is ok to ship them in the
> > PrestaShop installer. We know that Magento, who uses OSL too, are
> shipping
> > Apache v2 libraries, like some from Elastic. So, it might be good. But,
> our
> > legal team can't find a clear confirmation that this is possible, and
> that
> > it does not represent a compliance failure.
> >
> >
> >
> > When I read your interview, and other documents about OSL, my feeling is
> > that the OSL allows to distribute the code with any aggregated software
> > (e.g dependencies), and does not require to change their license. And
> that,
> > of course, only derivative work of the code in OSL must be in OSL. But, I
> > am not a lawyer, and our legal team is looking for a clear statement.
> >
> >
> >
> > That is why, recently, I sent a question about this problem to the OSI
> > mailing list, where the answer was, to make it short: "ask a lawyer".
> Then,
> > I thought that you were certainly the best person to confirm what is the
> > right way to aggregate libraries in an OSL project, and what are the
> > compatible licenses. And so, in a way, that would also clarify what you
> > told in this old interview.
> >
> >
> >
> > So, if you could provide some clarification in an answer, or links to
> > already existing resources, that would be a great help for the PrestaShop
> > project and its users.
> >
> >
> >
> > Of course, if you need more details or information, please let know. I
> > will be available.
> >
> >
> >
> > Looking forward to hearing from you,
> >
> >
> >
> > Antoine
> >
> >
> >
> > [image: PrestaShop]
> > <
> https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures
> >
> >
> > *Antoine Thomas aka ttoine*
> >
> > Developer Advocate
> >
> > t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
> >
> > antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
> >
> >
> >
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> End of License-discuss Digest, Vol 92, Issue 3
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