[#LU-304] Cray-specific licenses are not appropriate in community GPL release

[LU-304] Cray-specific licenses are not appropriate in community GPL release Created: 10/May/11 Updated: 15/Jun/11 Resolved: 15/Jun/11
Status:	Resolved
Project:	Lustre
Component/s:	None
Affects Version/s:	Lustre 2.1.0
Fix Version/s:	Lustre 2.1.0

Type:

Bug

Priority:

Minor

Reporter:

Christopher Morrone

Assignee:

Peter Jones

Resolution:

Fixed

Votes:

Labels:

None

Severity:

Rank (Obsolete):

4982

Description

I don't believe that Cray-specific licenses are appropriate in the community release. I will attach a patch to remove them.

Comments

Comment by Christopher Morrone [ 10/May/11 ]

http://review.whamcloud.com/529

Comment by Cory Spitz [ 11/May/11 ]

It may make sense to remove the LICENSE.cray files, but I'm checking with Cray legal to find out what this is about and whether they agree.

The original commit was against Lustre bug 16098, but I don't have access to it.

commit cbb0d69e53c0f928c5f43eeb125ba87283fe561b
Author: kalpak <kalpak>
Date: Tue Aug 26 04:52:29 2008 +0000

b=16098
i=hua.huang

add a special LICENSE file for Cray

Can someone say what bz 16098 was about? I'll report back as soon as I hear back from our legel dept.

Comment by Cory Spitz [ 12/May/11 ]

Cray doesn't understand where the special license came from and why it exists. It may make sense to remove it, but I think we need to understand why it was there in the first place. Cray legal is still following up, but they need some help.

Does anybody know how to get a hold of Hua or kalpak? Perhaps they can shed some light on this.

Comment by Robert Read (Inactive) [ 12/May/11 ]

Kalpak's current email is kalpak@clogeny.com.

Comment by Peter Jones [ 12/May/11 ]

Oracle have graciously opened up 16098 but there is not much to explain the rationale behind this. It seems that the ticket was an exercise to standardize the header files into the standard Sun format after the CFS integration. Kalpak added a "special Cray licence file" but there is nothing to suggest why. Perhaps Andreas remembers why as he seems to have been involved in the exercise...

Comment by Andreas Dilger [ 12/May/11 ]

Originally, CFS licensed Lustre to Cray under a proprietary license in order to allow it to be linked to the Catamount operating system (via liblustre). My understanding is that Catamount was not open-source, and the viral nature of the GPL license for Lustre would require Catamount to be GPLed as well.

Since we no longer control the copyright on the Lustre code, this extra license clause has no meaning any longer, because nobody but Oracle could every re-license the code.

Comment by Cory Spitz [ 12/May/11 ]

Andreas, thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I figured it had something to do with RedStorm and liblustre, but I was confused why the change was made in 2008

I'll forward this to Cray legal and come back with their advice. Thanks again!

Comment by Cory Spitz [ 15/Jun/11 ]

Cray legal has said that we do not object to the removal of the language.

Comment by Peter Jones [ 15/Jun/11 ]

Thanks Cory, we will land Chris's patch then

Comment by Andreas Dilger [ 15/Jun/11 ]

Patch was landed, closing bug.