Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 0:36 UTC (Thu) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
Parent article: Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

> He goes on to remind developers that signing a CLA sets up this kind of loophole

> unless all of the previous contributors (including Elastic) sign a new agreement, AWS would be unable to relicense the code anyway

This is wrong as far as I can tell. In this article, relicense seems to refer to the common loose definition of changing the effective license for future releases, and that is perfectly able to be done without any CLA for lax pushover licenses like this case with Apache v2. Just write the new code under a proprietary license which "subsumes" the lax license, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-compatibility.en.html . This is a common practice in proprietary software and one of the biggest reasons to use copyleft licenses.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 15:19 UTC (Thu) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link] (8 responses)

That changes the effective license of the combined work, but it does not change the license of the ALv2-licensed code which is incorporated into that work. Proprietary works which contain ALv2-licensed components are still required to acknowledge that fact and reproduce the license text and copyright notices. This isn't much of a bar, of course, since it doesn't require source code disclosure, but it is not true that the ALv2-licensed works have been 'relicensed'.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 31, 2021 19:23 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (7 responses)

It's more than enough of a bar to cause big companies severe discomfort - we didn't know it at the time, but the reason AT&T got crucified in court over Unix was they managed to - *seriously* - be in breach of the BSD licence!

Cheers,
Wol

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 0:41 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

I must have missed that one. How?! (Was this the advertising clause version, and they didn't attach the attribution that clause requires?)

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 1:16 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

Bear in mind that this is the real BSD licence - as in you must credit Berkeley...

But what happened was that, as part of their claim that Berkeley infringed AT&T copyrights, AT&T claimed ownership of utilities like vi. Berkeley promptly brought evidence that, not only was vi written at Berkeley not AT&T, but that the reason AT&T mistakenly claimed it was that they had deleted all evidence as to who owned the copyright!

That was why they capitulated so quickly, and wanted it all sealed - if they mistakenly claimed stuff that clearly belonged to other people, then they had no way to prove they owned anything, and even worse that lack of proof was down to the fact they themselves had destroyed it.

The settlement should be available on Groklaw somewhere - someone made a Freedom of Information request for it and sent it to PJ. In hindsight everyone was surprised no one had tried that earlier ...

Cheers,
Wol

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 1:23 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I should have added this was what killed the SCOG case - it proved that SCOG had no valid claim to any part of Unix before SysV and all they had was the stuff written by Novell and themselves.

Cheers,
Wol

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 1:40 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Now the unanswerable question, of course: was this incompetence (which I can *easily* see), or malice backfiring (attempts to claim stuff as their own that really wasn't)...

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 9:48 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Bear in mind that - in the US - they weren't part of Berne until 1984. It was therefore assumed that software was covered by contract and trade secret, not copyright. Also, when was GNU founded? Early 80s? Nearly all software prior to Berne/mid-80s was open source, as in when you bought a computer you got the software AND THE SOURCE to the software.

At some point late 70s early 80s I guess, especially given that AT&T was governed by the anti-trust rules that they weren't allowed to compete in the software business, it was *company* *policy* that all software should be supplied without copyright notices (seeing as it was believed copyright didn't apply).

Problem was, Unix as supplied by AT&T contained a LOT of code from three University sources - Berkeley who claimed copyright, that Australian university who's name I always forget, and University College London, for whom the latter two copyright definitely DID apply.

So the Judge's guidance before making a ruling said "AT&T have deleted the copyright notices, therefore it's down to AT&T to prove they own the code". Seeing as I guess they didn't have a decent and long-standing backup system to prove where the code came from, they threw in the towel pretty quick, rather than have the Judge rule that they couldn't prove they owned it therefore they didn't. Hence the extreme secrecy over the settlement ... the Emperor had no clothes ...

Cheers,
Wol

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 10:02 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

Possibly University of New South Wales - John Lions was there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lions

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 5, 2021 20:56 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Where AT&T (and SCO) failed was in not obfuscating the fraud well enough, and choosing to make an enemy of a large, well-organised group instead of trampling individuals. For a success story, see VMware.

Incidentally, this sort of scam is now the main business model of the “music rights societies” (a euphemism if there ever was one) feeding off of Youtube's automated system. Make a throwaway shell company with a name that looks like it was algorithmically generated itself, upload recordings of white noise, covers of other people's music, microphones pointed at bird feeders, and monetise, monetise, monetise. The system they abuse is built to be a death march for anyone coming in at the other side (Google will do anything to avoid employing real humans to support their products), so this is virtually consequence-free.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 4, 2021 21:12 UTC (Thu) by robert.berger (subscriber, #69236) [Link] (2 responses)

I am not a lawyer but also thought that Apache 2 does not require a CLA to be changed to a proprietary license. This might also be a reason why its usage is on the rise while copyleft license usage is declining.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Feb 5, 2021 15:13 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Does Apache 2 allow re-licencing? PROBABLY NOT.

Does it allow mixing with closed code? I think it does.

So no you probably can't *change* Apache 2 to closed, but there is no bar to inluding Apache 2 code in your closed project.

Okay, nit-picking, but get the legal nits wrong and it can be nasty - nits bite!

Cheers,
Wol

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Mar 12, 2023 9:10 UTC (Sun) by robert.berger (subscriber, #69236) [Link]

relicensing:

Here[1] it says: ". What are the Apache License terms & conditions?
The Apache License is a permissive open source software license - so you can release your modified version of the Apache licensed product under any license of your choice..."

"... However, you are required to release all the unmodified parts of the software under the same license (the Apache License)..."

[1] https://www.mend.io/resources/blog/top-10-apache-license-...