I am not a lawyer, but....
As I ran a diff between the 3.0.1 tarball and the recently released
3.0.2 tarball I stumbled across a license issue. Having already built
3.0.1 packages in OBS I might be in trouble already, but I didn't read
it all and figured I'd ask some questions first.
The source contains a license in build/license that is an EULA and
appears to be geared toward the Citrix Product. This made me poke around
to find a page [1] where it clearly states that 3.0 is licensed under
GPLv3 and 3.1 will be licensed under ASLv2.
In the 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 license it states "The PRODUCT is the Citrix
proprietary software program in object code form distributed hereunder."
which would appear to be in conflict with GPLv3 at least, and based on
my interpretation 3.0.x should still be licensed under GPLv3.
Before I start with my questions let me state that I don't really care
whether the code if licensed under ASLv2 or GPLv3. I have no intention
of starting a political flame war or discussion about license choice. I
am concerned about this from a packagers point of view only.
- It appears to me that build/license should be removed from the source
code, all branches?
- Should there not be a LICENSE file at the top of the source tree that
clearly states the license that covers the tree?
- Is the plan to create a 3.1 branch once the code base moves to the ASF
infrastructure?
- How does the license change affect the master branch? After all,
calling something 3.1 vs. 3.0 is an artifact of the source control
system, or will this be date/commit based, i.e. as of commit X the
master branch is considered ASLv2? (And maybe commit X coincides with
the creation of the 3.1 branch)
- Is there someone from Citrix specifically tasked to remove artifacts
like this from the code base? It would be difficult for community
contributors to feel confident/comfortable in sending submit request to
remove artifacts like this from the code base.
Thanks,
Robert
[1] http://cloudstack.org/about-cloudstack/license.html
--
Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU
SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX
Tech Lead
rjsch...@suse.com
rschw...@ca.ibm.com
781-464-8147
