Incorrect/mixed licensing headers in some source files

Opps right comment in wriong bug. Please discard comment #2

On Wednesday 10 April 2013, you wrote:
> ** Attachment added: "License check output"
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/openobject-server/+bug/1167034/+attachment/3635
> 899/+files/licensecheck.txt

Some quick notes:

server/*/services/websrv_lib.py MUST be LGPL'd . I wrote that lib and
explicitly wish it to be available for any GPL or non-GPL project.

addons/document[_ftp|_webdav]? Shall have the [A]GPL license like the rest of
OpenERP. That means, I permit OpenERP SA. to change their license from GPLv2
to [A]GPLv3, in accordance with the rest of OpenERP.

What I (as a copyright holder) do NOT permit is to have any other 3rd party,
proprietary or non-GPL (aka "Enterprise") license ..

server/*/report/rml2pdf: You should investigate more. We'd better trace the
origins of that code to ensure it is not derived from the closed-source
utility offered there: http://www.reportlab.com/software/reportlab-plus/

Hi Panos! Long time, no see:)

About rml2pdf: as far as I'm concerned, I trust the license data stated by OpenERP. That is, the responsibility to find out whether rpm2pdf really is LGPL/ AGPL/whatever is OpenEPR, SA's since they define the license.

I really don't question the license terms as such, just tries to understand what the license texts mean and their implications. Currently, the provisionary answer is that current license conditions blocks use of OpenERP 7.0 in Fedora. Since this is just about licensing, the conclusion should be valid for all distros.

As for relicensing addons/docuement/[_ftp|_webdabv] stuff I have no opinion about this. Even if these files are relicensed, there's still a lot of GPLv2+ and GPLv3+ files. Although somewhat complicated. this is perfectly OK to package and distribute.

The problem is the files with multiple licenses with no clue about what license applies to what code.

I also note that websrv_lib.py seems to have a GPL license, which contradicts Pano's requirement on LGPL. However, this is between Panos and OpenERP; I have no part in this discussion. As of 7.0, this file clearly has a GPLv2+ license.

Discussion in fedora-legal mailing list: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2013-April/002125.html.

Conclusion is as I feared: these licenses are simply not usable, and cannot go into Fedora (and really no other distro). I suggest that:

- The first two examples are relicensed using the original LPGL license, adding OpenERP's copyright notice
- Likewise with the .../openerp_report_designer/* files
- That the discussion between Pano and OpenERP, SA about websrv.py is resolved.

My assessment is that distributing these files will cause legal problems unless these issues are resolved. The packaging of 7.0 for Fedora is blocked by this bug.

What I do here is questioning whether it's legal to distribute this package. This is no minor issue, and I would appreciate a reaction from the copyright owners.

These four patches should fix this issue. Of course, since this about licensing I cannot apply them myself.

Hi Alec,

You're right these files have received incorrect license headers at some point and we need to correct them. Thanks a lot for spending the time to track them, researching the proper way to fix them and submitting the patches!
Your patches look good to me after a quick scan, I'll double-check and apply them as soon as possible in the 7.0 branches. They're indeed quite low-risk in terms of features ;-)

@Panos: thanks for your input on this, it's very appreciated!

Note: the rml2pdf/rdf2html stuff was written by Fabien Pinckaers as part of his master's thesis at UCL before the creation of TinyERP/OpenERP, as an open source alternative to ReportLab's closed-source libraries.

Alec, your patches have landed in 7.0 at the following revisions:
 - server: rev 4951 rev-id: <email address hidden>
 - addons: rev 9051 rev-id: <email address hidden>

Thanks for reporting and providing the fix (and for your patience! :-))

Thanks for fixing, I'll resume the 7.0 packaging for Fedora later this week.

If you really appreciate my patches, perhaps you could have a look at bug 993414 ? This is by no means a blocker, but a pain in the ass. For that, I have no patches but instead the commands to apply; it should also be a quick fix.

Reopening. Unfortunately, my last patch was not complete and did not update five files. Attaching new patch. which fixes this.

I will take this bug as a clear message of OpenERP, SA's intent to relicense these files according to this patch and will continue the Fedora packaging on these premises. That said, this is still a legal issue and thus not trivial.

Thanks for the update! I've applied your new patch verbatim to the openobject-addons branch, but I modified the openobject-server part to match what we did to the other rml2html/rm2pdf files last time: keep only the LGPL license and discard the AGPLv3 boilerplate. Any particular reason why this time you had kept the AGPLv3 license instead for the rml2pdf/utils.py file?

The updated revisions:
- server 7.0: 4964 rev-id: <email address hidden>
- addons 7.0: 9081 rev-id: <email address hidden>

No, I probably just got it wrong. As long as the licenses re consistent, this is basically your show and and have really no opinion. Thanks for fixing