On Wed, 20 May 2015, Paul Jakma wrote:
Merging was not your first choice admittedly, but it seemed all the
options sucked. You did not object to this course then. You *defended*
this move back then.
And just to refresh the context within which the decision was made, in
2012:
* Juliusz had been asking us to merge for months
* I asked him if he could make a clear division between the original
MIT/X11 code from babeld, and the code that depended on GPL Quagga,
because it seemed like there was a good portion of the latter in the
code, as that latter portion would likely need to be distributed
explictly under the GPL if we were to distribute it.
(Note Juliusz has since claimed publically that "Paul did not simply ask
us to add GPL headers as a condition for inclusion into Quagga;" - this
is not true, and I can pull the email).
* Juliusz did not want that, and felt it unnecessary work, but continued
to send us merge requests.
* Juliusz told us he chose the MIT/X11 because he didn't care about
licensing and described it as “This licence basically says "do whatever
you want, be happy, just don't claim you wrote this code."”
* We got SFLC advice that suggested quagga-babeld likely should be
distributed under the GPL.
At this stage, I don't think we would have merged.
* Denis, a Quagga maintainer at the time, had a somewhat problematic fork.
It was official looking, as he was a maintainer, and named "Quagga-RE",
however it was being developed somewhat at odds with Quagga.net.
* Denis merged Juliusz/Matthieu's git request.
At this stage we had:
* Juliusz, who had told us:
- he deliberately chose an MIT/X11 licence because he didn't care much
about licensing and MIT/X11 allowed pretty much anything
- his code was GPL compatible
- he didn't want GPL headers on the code
- he wanted us to merge
* A somewhat official looking Quagga branch distributing quagga-babeld in
what seemed to be a way that suggested Quagga endorsed heavily-Quagga
dependent code being shipped outside of the GPL, which seemed at odds
with legal advice.
Our choices now reduced to picking from a set of unpalatable choice:
* Doing nothing, and maybe reinforcing the impression Quagga-RE was giving
* Dealing with Quagga-RE
* Merging quagga-babeld ourselves, with GPL notices, as a counter-point.
I advocated the latter approach to the maintainers. I knew Juliusz
disagreed with GPL notices, but ultimately seemed to care more about
merging, and he had told us he deliberately chose a very permissive
licence. Further, we could and did, address any practical implications of
the GPL notices for sharing code with standalone-babeld by requiring
dual-licensing of any contributions - ensuring all contributions would be
available under MIT/X11 to Juliusz for use in standalone babeld.
The other maintainers did not object to this course sufficiently to block
it. They were able to review the merge, including the commit message.
It was a balancing act. I assumed ultimately Juliusz would be happy we had
merged, would see that his desire for MIT/X11 licensing had been
practically met through the dual-licensing requirements on contributions.
Further, we acted within his licence. The MIT/X11 licence specifically
allows us to add other licences, including the GPL. I believe Juliusz
acknowledges that.
Secondly, every lawyer I have ever taken advice from on Quagga has told me
that code that relies on GPL libzebra or code that depends on GPL Quagga
likely *must* be distributed in accordance with the GPL. That's now 3
different sets of lawyers (corporate counsel at a prior employer, SFCL,
and a solicitor who has advised me specifically on this matter).
Unfortunately, Juliusz got very offended. I am sorry about that.
If I could have the benefit of hindsight then, I wouldn't have advocated
merging, of course.
regards,
--
Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org @pjakma Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.
-- James Thurber_______________________________________________
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