Re: [dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux Foundation" call, November 29th

["O'Driscoll, Tim" <tim.odriscoll@intel.com>]

> From: Dave Neary [mailto:dneary@redhat.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2016 6:41 PM
> To: O'Driscoll, Tim <tim.odriscoll@intel.com>; Michael Dolan
> <mdolan@linuxfoundation.org>; moving@dpdk.org
> Subject: Re: [dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux
> Foundation" call, November 29th
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 12/01/2016 12:40 PM, O'Driscoll, Tim wrote:
> > Thanks Mike. I realise you can’t say too much in public about what is
> essentially a legal issue.
> >
> > To summarise, these are the options we seem to have:
> >
> > 1. Continue with BSD license and DCO:
> > Advantages: Easy (nothing changes). This combination has worked well
> for several years with many companies contributing to the project and
> deploying DPDK-based solutions. No CLA required.
> > Disadvantages: Some Linaro members may not be able to contribute
> and/or deploy DPDK-based solutions.
> >
> > 2. Use Apache 2 for new contributions:
> > Advantages: It’s a fairly easy change. Provides patent protection for
> new contributions. No CLA required.
> > Disadvantages: Doesn’t cover the existing DPDK code so the actual
> benefit of this is very small.
> >
> > 3. Use Apache 2 and re-license existing code:
> > Advantages: Patent protection for everything. No CLA required.
> > Disadvantage: We need to re-license everything. I suspect that’s a big
> effort and it will be very difficult to get agreement from everybody
> who's contributed. We would also need to consider DPDK code that’s dual-
> licensed. We have some code that’s dual BSD-GPLv2. IANAL, and I'm far
> from an expert on SW licensing, but I think Apache 2 is not compatible
> with GPLv2, so this might need to become Apache 2/GPLv3.
> 
> This might be a smaller task that you might think.
> 
> We get to 99%+ with 7-8 companies. Each company will probably want to do
> a patent review on code they are contributing to see what they are
> licensing (and this can be a lengthy task, but for some of the bigger
> participants, this may already be an ongoing activity, or an acceptable
> level of risk). You only need agreement from copyright holders, and it
> is entirely possible that most participants work for companies that
> retain the copyright to contributions.

I did a quick scan of the copyright lines in the DPDK repo. It was only a quick look so this isn't an exhaustive list, it was just to get an idea of scale. Purely based on who has asserted copyright in the file headers, the people who would need to agree to re-licensing or applying a retrospective CLA include:

Intel
6WIND
RehiveTech
Vladimir Medvedkin
Akamai Technologies
Cavium Networks
Tilera
Neil Horman
Freescale Semiconductor
Netronome Systems
IGEL
Canonical
John Linville
Broadcom
Chelsio
Linaro
EZchip
Ethan Zhuang
Hannes Frederic Sowa
CESNET
Cisco
Nuova Systems
Mellanox