[Fedora-legal-list] [WTF] openerp: what's this license (#1)?

[Alec Leamas]

On 2013-04-10 19:07, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 04:08:06PM +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
>> On 2013-04-10 16:03, Tom Callaway wrote:
>>> On 04/09/2013 11:08 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:41:02AM +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
>>>>> HI all!
>>>>>
>>>>> openerp 7.0 have some files with license below. Is it possible to
>>>>> conclude an effective license for this? (AGPL 3.0+ and LGPL 2.1+)? Or is
>>>>> it just an invalid attempt to relicense?
>>>> On its face this is no good.
>>> I concur that this is a very weird mix.
>>>
>>> ~tom
>>>
>>> ==
>>> Fedora Project
>> Yes... Any ideas how to cope with it out there? I have filed an
>> upstream bug, but they are not that responsive.
>>
>> Basically, I think i t would be helpful with a conclusion that it's
>> either possible to use in Fedora or not.
> Seems just on a superficial glance like something upstream might be
> able to correct with a license change. But if they're not responsive,
> not sure what more you can do.
>
>   - RF
>
I'm taking this as this license cannot go into Fedora.

Thinking this over, I think I can even explain why. What OpenERP has 
done is to use work copyrighted by others and modified it. This is 
according to the original license terms and thus OK. But since it's a 
derivative work, OpenERP cannot impose limitations on  the original 
license terms  by adding their own. Ergo: since the combined license 
terms breaks the original license they are a (illegal?) mess.

This line of reasoning also applies to the other license template I posted.

Upstream bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/openobject-server/+bug/1167034

Thanks for  looking into this!

--alec