Excerpts from Pavlo Shchelokovskyy's message of 2016-05-19 15:28:03 +0300: > Hi all, > > I have a question re FOSS licenses interplay. I am pretty sure that > OpenStack community (e.g. openstack-ansible) has already faced such > questions and I would really appreciate any advice. > > We are developing a new ansible-based deployment driver for Ironic [0] and > would like to use some parts of ansible-lib Python API to avoid boilerplate > code in custom Ansible modules and callbacks we are writing, and in the > future probably use Ansible Python API to launch playbooks themselves. > > The problem is Ansible and ansible-lib in particular are licensed under GPL > v3 [1] "or later" [2]. According to [3] Apache 2.0 license is only one way > compatible with GPL v3 (GPL v3-licensed code can include Apache > 2.0-licensed code, but not vice versa). > > I am by far not a legal expert, so my questions are: > > Does it mean that the moment I do "from ansible import ..." in my Python > code, which AFAIU means I am "linking" to it, I am required to use a > GPLv3-compliant license for my code too (in particular not Apache 2.0)? > What problems might that imply in respect with including such code in an > OpenStack project (e.g. submitting it to Ironic repo) and distributing the > project?
I'm not an expert on the interpretation of what "linking" is when it comes to Python apps, but we have a policy that OpenStack projects are not allowed to depend on GPL libraries [1]. So I think you can't do what you want, because of that policy. [1] http://governance.openstack.org/reference/licensing.html > If there are indeed problems with that, would it be safer to keep the code > in a separate project and also distribute it separately? > Even when distributed separately, will merely using (dynamically importing > at run-time) a GPLv3-licensed driver from ApacheV2-licensed Ironic > constitute any license violation? Distribution isn't the only issue, it's how the code is executed. > > Note that technically we could avoid re-using Ansible code for Ansible > modules and callbacks, just that it would be much-much less convenient. Unfortunately I think you're going to have to do the less convenient thing this time. Doug > > [0] https://review.openstack.org/#/q/topic:bug/1526308 > [1] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/COPYING > [2] https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/__init__.py#L8 > [3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html > > Best regards, > > Dr. Pavlo Shchelokovskyy > Senior Software Engineer > Mirantis Inc > www.mirantis.com __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: [email protected]?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
