VOTE thread - Licensing

[russ]

Goal: conversation and recommendation for licensing choices for
Foundation code.

Voting closes: December 1, 00:00 UTC.

Tensions:

XMOS fears loss of control - so they would like permissive license
that allows them to walk off the field with their ball?

Foundation members don't want to lose access to their contributions
- and a GPL style license forces the world to publish source.

Insights (check these against your own understanding/experience):

Once all sides understand the process, they will understand that
collaboration is unavoidable, and not wish fork to private repos.

It's not realistic for small hard/firm/software products to be based
on GPL - forcing constant openness is too onerous and would force
members away. MIT/L-GPL more flexible, but probably folks will come
back to the fold, for strength in numbers.

[Al Wood]

I would prefer GPL, but will play along with BSD/MIT styles

--
http://www.folknology.com

[Kaspar Bumke]

+1 GPL and/or LGPL

[Interactive Matter (Marcus)]

Vote for LGPL or MIT – it should be usable in commercial projects

[Kaspar Bumke]

Commercial projects can use GPL code just like everyone else.

[Kaspar Bumke]

Goal: conversation and recommendation for licensing choices for
Foundation code.

Voting closes: December 1, 00:00 UTC.

Tensions:

 XMOS fears loss of control - so they would like permissive license
that allows them to walk off the field with their ball?

 Foundation members don't want to lose access to their contributions
- and a GPL style license forces the world to publish source.

Insights (check these against your own understanding/experience):

 Once all sides understand the process, they will understand that
collaboration is unavoidable, and not wish fork to private repos.

 It's not realistic for small hard/firm/software products to be based
on GPL - forcing constant openness is too onerous and would force
members away. MIT/L-GPL more flexible, but probably folks will come
back to the fold, for strength in numbers.

Recorded Votes:

Al Wood: GPL or BSD/MIT styles
Kaspar Bumke: GPL  or LGPL
Interactive Matter: LGPL or MIT
 

[Jonathan May]

Phew, seriously?

XMOS uses Illinois/NCSA-style licenses for Software and Hardware. I
believe the software license is unmodified and the hardware license is
the simplest you can find. These are at:

http://www.xmos.com/legal/open-software-license
http://www.xmos.com/legal/hardware-license-agreement

These are, generally, compatible with other open-source licenses.

What is the idea behind GPL/LGPL? You will find it far, far easier to
get XMOS on board with this thing if you use a more permissive license
that is considered "friendlier". Many commercial people are terrified of
"GPL" or anything related since the Cisco fiasco - whether they are
right to be or not.

Assuming I get a vote, I vote for using the licenses XMOS currently
uses. It took a huge amount of time and effort and thought to arrive at
the conclusion these were probably the right licenses for software
components and PCB designs based on/around the XMOS hardware, and they
are ones that you know XMOS already supports.

--
Jonathan May, XFund
t: +44(0)7767 847278
f: +44(0)1173 270277
e: jona...@xfund.com

[Al Wood]

Everyone gets a vote, the NCSA license is fine from my point of view,
I think its an MIT derivative isn't it? If it helps get Xmos onboard
then lets go with it.

regards
Al

--
http://www.folknology.com

[Andrew Back]

On Nov 23, 3:25 pm, Jonathan May <jonat...@xfund.com> wrote:
> Phew, seriously?
>
> XMOS uses Illinois/NCSA-style licenses for Software and Hardware. I
> believe the software license is unmodified and the hardware license is
> the simplest you can find. These are at:
>
> http://www.xmos.com/legal/open-software-licensehttp://www.xmos.com/legal/hardware-license-agreement

Nice and simple licence, however, I would advise against creating any
sort of new licence even if its only new in name, if possible. Since
legal counsel tend to go "oh look, *another* license we're not
familiar with". If you pick an existing OSI (http://opensource.org)
approved license you make everything so much simpler and you can say
it's "open source". IIRC, in theory you cannot say this if it is not
on the list (OSI protect use of the term).

That said, I understand the effort involved in relicensing and you
could perhaps get OSI to approve the XMOS licence. Although I see
there is already an (different) approved "Open Software License":

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/osl-3.0.php

> These are, generally, compatible with other open-source licenses.
>
> What is the idea behind GPL/LGPL? You will find it far, far easier to
> get XMOS on board with this thing if you use a more permissive license
> that is considered "friendlier". Many commercial people are terrified of
> "GPL" or anything related since the Cisco fiasco - whether they are
> right to be or not.

I strongly suspect that there is a back story to that incident. The
GPL fear is mostly unfounded and once legal counsel come to understand
that copyleft's reciprocal nature protects investment in technology
and helps ensure continued freedom for the code they tend to quickly
come round.

LGPL would get my vote if it could easily be modified to allow static
linking. I assume that XCore applications are rarely, if ever, built
with dynamic loading. So, some more thought might need to be given to
the relationships between code components in XCore applications and
how an LGPL type licensing framework could be employed. That is to say
that people can publish under LGPL, and any third party mods or
derivative (cut and paste and refactored etc) works must be LGPL too.
However, original third party code can employ an arbitrary licence
provide it uses a particular interface between it and your code. This
interface could be separate threads and integration via channels (in
lieu of dynamic linking), for example.

> Assuming I get a vote, I vote for using the licenses XMOS currently
> uses. It took a huge amount of time and effort and thought to arrive at
> the conclusion these were probably the right licenses for software
> components and PCB designs based on/around the XMOS hardware, and they
> are ones that you know XMOS already supports.

This will almost certainly prove easiest.

Licensing aside, any thought as to copyrights? Do contributors retain
them or are they assigned to the foundation? Former is easier but can
make later relicensing extremely difficult and even impossible. Latter
requires paperwork and trust. A nice half-way house is to employ a
Fiduciary Licensing Agreement (FLA) between contributor and
foundation, where the foundation is assigned copyright and they
license back rights to the contributor such that they are free to
reuse it elsewhere. Plus agreements tend to be worded such that
copyright reverts back if the foundation ever turns evil. KDE
Foundation, amongst others, employ these.

Contributor/copyright policy is something you'd want to sort out as
soon as possible to save having to go and track people down later and
ask them to fill in paperwork.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Al Wood]

On 25 November 2010 23:35, Andrew Back <arb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 3:25 pm, Jonathan May <jonat...@xfund.com> wrote:
>> Phew, seriously?
>>
>> XMOS uses Illinois/NCSA-style licenses for Software and Hardware. I
>> believe the software license is unmodified and the hardware license is
>> the simplest you can find. These are at:
>>
>> http://www.xmos.com/legal/open-software-licensehttp://www.xmos.com/legal/hardware-license-agreement
>
> Nice and simple licence, however, I would advise against creating any
> sort of new licence even if its only new in name, if possible. Since
> legal counsel tend to go "oh look, *another* license we're not
> familiar with". If you pick an existing OSI (http://opensource.org)
> approved license you make everything so much simpler and you can say
> it's "open source". IIRC, in theory you cannot say this if it is not
> on the list (OSI protect use of the term).
>
> That said, I understand the effort involved in relicensing and you
> could perhaps get OSI to approve the XMOS licence. Although I see
> there is already an (different) approved "Open Software License":
>
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/osl-3.0.php

The license Xmos have chosen and Jonathan is refering to is the NCSA
license which is not only OSI approved but also GPL compatible.

--
http://www.folknology.com

[Jonathan May]

Hey Andrew,

Good to see you here.

I agree with a lot of your points - particularly regarding the fact that
the GPL/LGPL is not *really* a threat. The problems are the psychology
of fear and speed. People are afraid, however irrationally. This is not
really an XMOS fear but a perception of a *customer* fear. As such, it
is a major psychological barrier.

The foundation has quite enough work to do without trying to overcome
this - even *if* the right course of action is to fight it.

These concerns were carefully addressed when those licenses I referred
to were agreed upon - and as mentioned by Al they are OSI approved and
GPL compatible.

I don't have a view on the copyright issue. I am slightly concerned we
could easily become mired in discussions about licenses and copyright
and etc etc before there's any software to license. :-)

Anyone "been there done that" and want to lead the way on these issues?

Jonathan

--
Jonathan May, Managing Director
Silicon Futures Limited
T: +44(0)7767 847278
F: +44(0)1173 270277
E: jona...@siliconfutures.com

[Andrew Back]

On Nov 29, 11:09 am, Jonathan May <jonat...@siliconfutures.com> wrote:
> Hey Andrew,
>
> Good to see you here.

Thanks!

> I agree with a lot of your points - particularly regarding the fact that
> the GPL/LGPL is not *really* a threat. The problems are the psychology
> of fear and speed. People are afraid, however irrationally. This is not
> really an XMOS fear but a perception of a *customer* fear. As such, it
> is a major psychological barrier.

Agreed, it can be.

> The foundation has quite enough work to do without trying to overcome
> this - even *if* the right course of action is to fight it.

Appreciated.

> These concerns were carefully addressed when those licenses I referred
> to were agreed upon - and as mentioned by Al they are OSI approved and
> GPL compatible.
>
> I don't have a view on the copyright issue. I am slightly concerned we
> could easily become mired in discussions about licenses and copyright
> and etc etc before there's any software to license. :-)

Obviously keen to see that you don't get mired down with such details,
but also wanted to raise these potential issues early on in the hope
of mitigating the risk of pain later down the line.

> Anyone "been there done that" and want to lead the way on these issues?

I think I know just the chap to ask for his opinion...

Cheers,

Andrew