[HN Gopher] LXD now re-licensed and under a CLA
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LXD now re-licensed and under a CLA
Author : ropyeett
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-12-12 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stgraber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (stgraber.org)
| ropyeett wrote:
| Looks like Canonical also messed up the licensing in their
| package: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/incorrect-license-
| information-f...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Based on Stephane Graber's post, it sounds like the headline
| isn't factual.
|
| I.e., Canonical _asserted_ that LXD is now AGPLv3, but lacked the
| legal authority to do that for some parts of the code base.
|
| CORRECTION: Looks like I was mistaken. See discussion below.
| headhasthoughts wrote:
| You, too, are wrong. From Canonical's actual announcement:
|
| > Canonical has decided to change the default contributions to
| the LXD project to AGPLv3 to align with our standard license
| for server-side code. All Canonical contributions have been
| relicensed and are now under AGPLv3. Community contributions
| remain under Apache 2.0.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. Seems like the headline was
| incorrect in a different way.
| tecleandor wrote:
| You're both kinda correct.
|
| What Stephane was complaining about is the whole Snap package
| for lxd has been marked as AGPL, and that's not correct.
|
| Check in the store, down, in the license info section:
|
| https://snapcraft.io/lxd
|
| Edit: also, from what I see in the commit, it doesn't make
| much distinction between what's AGPL and what not. https://gi
| thub.com/canonical/lxd/pull/12663/commits/b8ff449d...
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title was "Canonical re-licenses LXD under
| AGPLv3, slaps a CLA on top". I've changed it to the article's
| title, in keeping with HN's rule: " _Please use the original
| title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't
| editorialize._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| If the current title isn't accurate, and anyone can suggest a
| more accurate and neutral one, we can change it again.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Lxd as a whole is certaily now only available under the AGPLv3
| license. Some parts are also available under the Apache 2.0
| license. And Canonical are bound by that agreement to tell you
| such; but it is still factual to say you have to agree to the
| AGPLv3 to distribute it.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Linux containers project. Foreshadowing of this move at
| https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/
| photonbeam wrote:
| Time to support the fork
| jraph wrote:
| Is this FUD? [edit: it's not, see the replies - I kept my
| original comment below because that's what people answered to,
| but I no longer agree with it]
|
| ---
|
| The linked announcement says
|
| > Going forward, any contribution to LXD will be made under
| AGPLv3 by default. _The author of a change remains the copyright
| holder of their code (no copyright assignment)._
|
| Emphasis mine. No copyright assignment.
|
| So, Canonical now contributes in AGPLv3. The project is now
| AGPLv3 as well, with some parts in Apache 2. Contributors may
| contribute in Apache 2 if they wish but probably won't bother.
| They still own their code.
|
| The author is pissed off because he can't build custom versions
| without redistributing the modifications and can't sell services
| to companies afraid of the AGPL anymore.
| ropyeett wrote:
| https://ubuntu.com/legal/contributors/agreement for the
| details.
|
| In short, you don't lose your own copyright but you grant them
| a license to do whatever they want including re-license as they
| wish without having to ever consult you, allowing for your code
| to be used within their closed source projects under any
| license they wish.
| jraph wrote:
| Ah, right, it's not a copyright assignment, but there is a
| CLA. Confused the two concepts, rookie mistake. So yeah, not
| good. I will edit my comment. I would even say that not
| mentioning the CLA and mentioning the absence of copyright
| assignment in the announcement is quite dishonest.
| xoa wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the post also links the
| "add Canonical CLA check #12665" [0], and my understanding is
| that "retain copyright" here is like a typical forum agreement
| where you going forward must agree to a perpetual worldwide
| unlimited license to Canonical that they can use as they please
| per [1]:
|
| > _In effect, you're giving us a licence, but you still own the
| copyright -- so you retain the right to modify your code and
| use it in other projects._
|
| You explicitly do retain ownership, so you can then take that
| same code and contribute it elsewhere under any license you
| wish. The same author could contribute the same patch to both
| the LXD and the Incus fork. But some might object to being
| required to allow Canonical to specially license as they want.
|
| So your characterization seems unfair, and then gets kind of
| nasty at the end:
|
| > _The author is pissed off because he can 't build custom
| versions without redistributing the modifications_
|
| Incus is a full fork, and Canonical has apparently been taking
| changes back from it as well as is often the case with such
| forks where both sides get value from each other. It's
| perfectly understandable for some folks to be bummed if that's
| no longer the case, and there is nothing evil about the Apache2
| license. There's plenty of history that in OSS going back to
| the beginning, no need for insinuations or attacks. Shouldn't
| throw around "FUD" at core authors just because they're a touch
| blindsided.
|
| ----
|
| 0:
| https://github.com/canonical/lxd/pull/12665/commits/eb5c773d...
|
| 1: https://ubuntu.com/legal/contributors
| jraph wrote:
| Yep, you are right. See the followups. My characterization
| was indeed unfair. I confused copyright assignment and CLA,
| and understood "no copyright assignment" as "no CLA", which
| is of course wrong.
|
| And for me this totally reverse the situation, AGPL + CLA
| means "We can make it proprietary tomorrow, and only we can
| do it".
| shp0ngle wrote:
| "As a result, Canonical cannot release LXD under the AGPLv3
| license and likely never will be able to. LXD is now under a
| weird mix of Apache2 and AGPLv3 with no clear metadata indicating
| what file or what part of each file is under one license or the
| other."
|
| IANAL but that's not true? You can take Apache2 and relicense it
| under AGPL? You can take "less copyleft" license and make it
| "more copyleft".
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#apache2
|
| It's entirely kosher in my opinion, and the entire thing agpl,
| with no "weird mix" or whatever
| ropyeett wrote:
| They can freely include Apache2 licensed code in an AGPLv3
| project without having to re-license the entire project under
| Apache2 as it's not a copyleft license. However this doesn't
| make the code they included AGPLv3, that code remains Apache2
| and must be declared as such.
| jraph wrote:
| > You can take "less copyleft" license and make it "more
| copyleft".
|
| Only if licenses are compatible. But Apache 2 is AGPL-
| compatible so
|
| > It's entirely kosher in my opinion
|
| Yes, I think so too.
|
| However, they need to make it clear which parts are under
| Apache 2.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| what IS weird though is the go exosystem thing.
|
| in go ecosystem, copyleft is very much not the norm.
|
| People might not realise that by just adding copyleft
| dependency to go.mod, the entire project becomes effectively
| agpl as it has the code built-in.
| jorams wrote:
| If you add a dependency without understanding the license
| that dependency is released under, you should stop doing
| that. That counts for every license, and particularly if
| there is _no_ license.
| kragen wrote:
| the main reason there's a version 2 of the apache license is to
| ensure that it's clearly legal to incorporate apache-licensed
| code into gpled systems such as this new version of lxd
|
| it is correct that the ubuntu company cannot prohibit people from
| copying and modifying stephane's code, or indeed the entire
| previous version of lxd, under the terms of the apache license.
| but they can certainly keep using his code in new versions of lxd
| under agpl
|
| in fact, apple can use stephane's code in a proprietary lxd
| derivative if they want to. that's what the apache license is
| designed to permit
|
| if you want to prevent people from using your code in a more-
| restrictively-licensed fashion, don't use the apache or other
| bsd-like licenses; use a copyleft license like the agpl. and
| don't sign a cla
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(page generated 2023-12-12 23:00 UTC)