[yocto] Relicensing an Apache-licensed recipe as MIT

[Martin Kelly]

On 04/12/2017 09:43 AM, Martin Kelly wrote:
> On 04/12/2017 03:50 AM, Jussi Kukkonen wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 12 April 2017 at 12:54, Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com
>> <mailto:paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     On Wednesday, 12 April 2017 7:14:00 PM NZST Jussi Kukkonen wrote:
>>     > On 11 April 2017 at 23:52, Martin Kelly <mkelly at xevo.com
>> <mailto:mkelly at xevo.com>> wrote:
>>     > > I'm thinking about integrating the open-vm-tools recipe from
>> openswitch[1]
>>     > > into openembedded (it massively improves the performance of
>> VMWare guests)
>>     > > but first I have a question about licensing. The openswitch
>> repository is
>>     > > Apache-licensed while the openembedded layers are all MIT
>> licensed. I'm
>>     > > not
>>     > > a lawyer, but my understanding is that the Apache license is a
>> superset of
>>     > > the MIT license (it includes a patent clause that the MIT
>> license lacks),
>>     > > and therefore MIT code can be relicensed as Apache but not the
>> other way
>>     > > around.
>>     >
>>     > The license of the layer refers to the licensing of the recipe
>> files
>>     > themselves: the source code licenses of the projects the recipes
>> fetch and
>>     > build are another thing. As long as the source code license is
>> an open
>>     > source one there should be no complaints about integrating into an
>>     > openembedded layer.
>>     >
>>     > To be completely clear: The LICENSE variable in a recipe refers
>> to the
>>     > source code license of the project to be built and should be set
>> based on
>>     > the licensing info found within the version of source code that
>> we fetch
>>     > and build. The recipe files are licensed according to the
>> LICENSE and/or
>>     > COPYING files of the layer it is in.
>>     >
>>     > By the way, a quick search on layers.openembedded.org
>> <http://layers.openembedded.org> reveals this:
>>     >
>> http://git.openswitch.net/cgit/openswitch/ops-build/tree/yocto/openswitch/me
>>
>>
>> <http://git.openswitch.net/cgit/openswitch/ops-build/tree/yocto/openswitch/me>
>>
>>     >
>> ta-foss-openswitch/recipes-extended/open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools_10.0.5.bb
>>     <http://open-vm-tools_10.0.5.bb>
>>     > (it seems to think the correct license is GPL).
>>
>>     This is muddying the waters somewhat - the LICENSE variable has
>>     nothing to do
>>     with this. We're only concerned with the license of the recipe
>> itself.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks Paul: I was indeed confused and did not understand this was about
>> an existing recipe even though it was clearly explained in the original
>> post. Sorry for the noise.
>>
>> Jussi
>
> Right, I should have clarified. The underlying code is LGPLv2/GPLv2, but
> the recipe file itself is Apache licensed, which is my concern.
>
> It sounds like I should ask openswitch for relicensing first. If they
> say no, we can consider the situation further.

OK, Diego Dompe, the recipe's author, is amenable to relicensing, so I 
will go ahead and do that. Thanks for the help!