On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 03:49:39PM +0300, Leon Romanovsky wrote: > On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 11:34:21AM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 08:10:03PM +0300, Leon Romanovsky wrote: > > > > > I sure that this question will sound dumb for you, but can we unify all > > > code under OFA's licenses (dual-license)? I don't feel comfortable with > > > this multi-license situation. > > > > It is an excellent question. > > > > To do this we would need the OFA to talk to each of the member > > companies and get them to sign some kind of legal change of copyright > > document. Assuming all of the member companies agree, and all the > > member companies are the exhaustive copyright owners then the code can > > be placed under a single uniform license. > > > > As I understand it all OFA members were required to agree to use a > > specific licensing scheme, including specific license text when they > > signed the OFA membership agreement. What we are seeing here is that > > the corporate legal side agreed to something but the developers made > > small errors along the way, and those errors were later copied by > > other developers and spread widely. So the OFA has a basis for > > requests of this nature. > > > > For instance, a legal statement from Mellanox that all code they > > contributed is available under the GPLv2 or *either* MIT or FreeBSD > > license varient would allow immediately placing all Mellanox > > copyrighted code under the single Default License. I expect this is > > what Mellanox intended to do anyhow, the fact that ibverbs and all > > their providers had an error in the COPYING file is simply > > an unfortunate mistake. > > > > These sorts of license issues are typical in historical code bases. I > > would say we are in pretty good shape, from what I can tell absolutely > > everything is unambiguously licensed under at least the GPLv2, or a > > compatible license. > > > > Almost everything is alternatively licensed under some kind of BSD > > license. The notable exception is ipathverbs and rxe. It is also > > unfortunate we have so many BSD variants. > > > > Further, almost all C code is licensed under the dual GPLv2/OpenIB.org > > (MIT) license. The kernel is similar, almost all C code is using the > > MIT variant. Hence my desire to make that the license for new code in > > the tree. > > > > I would say this is a pretty good result. > > > > My ultimate suggestion is that we push the non-default copyright into > > the impacted files, eg add short licenses headers to the man pages, > > etc, and then delete the extraneous COPYING files once every single > > file has a correct license statement. From that point we can look at > > switching individual files based on the above Legal process to the > > Default License, or just leave them as is - a historical quirk. > > It looks like a lot of work to do and it can be handled by anyone. > Can OPA handle this? Sorry, OFA and not OPA. > > > > > Jason
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
