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?
Yes that's what it means. You can write modules in any license you want because AnsibleModule is BSD 2-clause, but plugins must be GPLv3. > 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? > I think your options are to make it function without the plugins, and distribute just them separately (so a bare bones version comes with Ironic, but it works better w/ the GPLv3 plugins), or just distribute the whole thing separately. Long term, you might approach Ansible about possibly making their plugin interface LGPL so that people can write non-GPL plugins. But, it may be part of a broader strategy to ensure that contribution happens in the open. As an OSS hippie, I applaud them for choosing a strong copyleft license. :) __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev