Change license to Apache license, Version 2.0
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	QChris
	Mar 25 2014, 7:20 PM

Description

There have been requests to re-license (part of) our analytics/kraken
repository under Apache License, Version 2.0.

Since the code of that repository lives in the Hadoop environment, where
basically everything is Apache License, Version 2.0, changing our
analytics/kraken repo to that license would help others to use and contribute
to our code. That would be a huge plus.

Also, (while most files come with GPLv2+) the repo itself is marked GPLv2
(no trailing +). This makes it hard for us to develop code from the code
samples of the documentation of the various projects, as those samples
are under Apache License, Version 2.0 (which is incompatible with GPLv2).
So the switch would also make our lives way easier as well.

The repository currently has only about a dozen different committers.
Most of them (former) WMF employees.

Version: unspecified
Severity: normal

Details

Reference: bz63084

Related Objects

Mentioned Here: rANKRfcd4eab42d7f: Changing Licenses from GPL-2 to Apache-2
rANKRe974d3896207: pom.xml GPL-2 to Apache-2

Event Timeline

• bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 3:02 AM

• bzimport added a project: Analytics-Clusters.

• bzimport set Reference to bz63084.

• bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

QChris created this task.Mar 25 2014, 7:20 PM

bingle-admin wrote:

Prioritization and scheduling of this bug is tracked on Mingle card https://wikimedia.mingle.thoughtworks.com/projects/analytics/cards/cards/1498

As it seems emails asking about the license change have been sent out already,
note that kraken has received a further committer in the meantime:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/121239/

Since Roger is the guy asking for the license change, I think we're ok :)

(In reply to Dan Andreescu from comment #3)

Since Roger is the guy asking for the license change, I think we're ok :)

IANAL. Maybe I was not CCed on those emails, but in the emails I saw,
he did not ask us to switch to Apache license, Version 2.0.
Instead, he only said that GPL on our code would not work for him.

Those are different things, and it is especially no endorsement to
relicense /his/ work under Apache license, Version 2.0.

After we suggested that re-licensing to Apache license, Version 2.0 might
not be undoable, he asked us whether we can make it happen. But at that
point in time, the repo did not yet contain his code, nor has it been
submitted for review.

So again, no endorsement to relicense /his/ work under Apache license,
Version 2.0.

You could probably argue around intentions and that stuff, but by what
I learnt about legal things is that assumptions and intentions are
always a source of confusion, and that they cost lots of time and
money. Whenever possible and uncontroversial, do make things explicit.
Especially, if it is as cheap as an email.

So up to now:

Roger contributed to the still GPL kraken repo.
We have no written waiver from him that he is ok with the license change.
Up to my knowledge, we did not even try to get it.

P.S.: By our conversation with Roger, I also would not expect that
Roger opposes the license change. But maybe it's not only his own
decision, but also the decision of the company he's working for. I've
seen such issues getting in the way and taking >3 months of back/forth
between companies, although it was only like 4 small patches and both
parties wanted to make it happen.

Ironholds unsubscribed.Dec 5 2014, 7:43 PM

@QChris is this still an issue? Since we have a new cluster & refinery repository I don't know if this still applies.

• kevinator triaged this task as Low priority.Dec 5 2014, 10:55 PM

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