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

[Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com>]

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.

Still, these can be a pain and a drag on momentum.

> Note that I’m assuming that the combination of Apache 2 and a CLA isn't an option because this seems redundant as both include patent protection. Maybe there are other reasons that would make this a valid combination though.

The Apache Software Foundation requires CLAs with copyright assignment
to the foundation for official Apache projects - this is to allow for
future license changes (an Apache v3 license), and also reflects some of
the difficulties of a 30 year old project (several of the original
copyright holders are no longer with the project, or have died, and the
succession rights for copyright materials can sometimes result in
unfortunate conflicts between the estates and open source projects).

> We do need to reach a conclusion on this and move forward. We should aim to resolve it at next week's meeting, so people should consider their position in advance of that. My vote would be for option 1.

My preference is to minimise change. I have no strong preference between
BSD + DCO and Apache v2. I would like to avoid a CLA.

Regards,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary - NFV/SDN Community Strategy
Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com
Ph: +1-978-399-2182 / Cell: +1-978-799-3338