Note that I'm not a lawyer of any type - this is a distillation of conversations I've had with real lawyers, but you should not take it as legal advice. Talk to your own legal people if you need something you can rely on.
> On 30 Jan 2019, at 23:41, John Harris <joh...@splentity.com> wrote: > > On Wednesday, January 30, 2019 4:19:13 PM EST Simon Farnsworth wrote: >> But the SSPL also prevents you from using Free Software with it, unless you >> have sufficient rights to offer said Free Software under the SSPL, as per >> section 13 of the SSPL. > > You don't have to relicense software in order to be able to use it. I do if I'm using it to provide a service that could be construed as "making the functionality of the Program … available to third parties as a service", under section 13 of the SSPL. As MongoDB's functionality includes retrieval of documents and document fragments, it's possible to construe the licence as covering anything that involves retrieval of a document or document fragment from a server (so all web applications, for example). This may not be what's intended, but it's a reasonable reading of the licence as written, and it could get expensive to argue in court that covering all document retrieval was not intended. > >> I do not have sufficient rights to relicence the Linux kernel under the SSPL >> - it's not GPLv2 compatible - and the Linux kernel is one part of a service >> I might choose to offer using only Free Software from Fedora's repos, plus >> an SSPL licensed component. > > Yeah, none of that matters. See section 1. I've read section 1 - Linux implements more than just a "Standard Interface" as per that section (it goes beyond POSIX or any interface specified by an Official Standards Body, and is not specified for a particular programming language). Because of the way section 1 is drafted, "System Libraries" are excluded from section 13, but *not* "Major Components"; the kernel in this case is a major component, and is thus only definitively excluded if it implements a "Standard Interface". This may be an oversight - they may intend to exclude "Major Components" as well as "System Libraries", but it's not what they've written in the licence text. Only an item "which is not part of that Major Component" or which "serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface" are excluded from the SSPL's reach. > >> Thus, I'm stuck - I can't use non-SSPL software from Fedora (or, indeed, >> from the FSF) in combination with SSPL licensed software to provide a >> service, even if I *also* make the full source of the entire service >> available, since I'm not making the source available under the SSPL. > > Unless you're providing MongoDB as a service, it doesn't matter, even > according to their own FAQ. > But not according to the text of the SSPL; for MongoDB specifically, the FAQ may act as "estoppel", but it's not part of the licence as written; merely providing document storage or retrieval provides "the functionality of the Program … to third parties". If I do that as a service - e.g. pulling out billing records from MongoDB - I'm "mak[ing] the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service", and I'm covered by section 13 and have to distribute all but "System Libraries" as source under the SSPL. This *includes* "Major Components", as section 1 doesn't actually exclude them. Again, this may not be what they intended, but it's what the text of the licence says, and I would rather not rely on having to claim that what they wrote is not what they meant in order to succeed in court. Given these issues with the drafting of the licence, and the need to rely on MongoDB's FAQ to argue that, in the MongoDB case, the FAQ acts as estoppel, I can see why Fedora legal would consider the licence non-free. You've made claims for it that aren't backed by the actual text of the licence, for example. -- Simon _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
