Clarification around the DCO

[James Bottomley]

On Fri, 2020-10-16 at 20:21 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 06:20:02PM -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Fri, 2020-10-16 at 17:56 -0700, Jeremy Allison via samba-
> > technical
> > > Ah, I've just remembered *why* we have a difference from
> > > your "standard" DCO text.
> > > 
> > > In our text we have the clause:
> > > 
> > > "(e) I am granting this work to this project under the terms of
> > > both the
> > >     GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public
> > > License
> > >     as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
> > > 3 of
> > >     these Licenses, or (at the option of the project) any later
> > > version."
> > 
> > OK, so legally LGPLv3 and GPLv3 are the same licence: LGPLv3 is
> > GPLv3 with an additional permission.  Your clause (e) effectively
> > requires GPLv3 with the additional permission on every
> > contribution.
> > 
> > > The reason for this is that Samba as a whole is under
> > > GPLv3, but there are many useful libraries within Samba
> > > (talloc, tevent, tdb etc.) that started life as an integral
> > > part of Samba - so GPLv3, but then external projects wanted
> > > to use them without being bound by GPLv3 terms, so asked
> > > us to re-license under LGPLv3.
> > 
> > Right so what you really want is some event to trigger the addition
> > of the permission that changes the licence from GPL to LGPL.  This
> > more or less is why the apache model is broad inbound grant coupled
> > with licensing by the project board to the contributor, so the
> > board decides.  Without this governance trigger effectively the
> > whole of Samba is LGPL because every contribution was required to
> > have the additional permission.
> > 
> > Obviously, a lot of open source projects don't like the apache
> > inbound != outbound model (and don't have a real governing board),
> > so something else has to be the trigger.  The model I've always
> > liked is all code in X (usually lib/) is under the LGPL, so the
> > trigger is accepting a patch moving the code under X.  You can see
> > this with the efitools project, which is under GPLv2 but shares its
> > lib/ code with shim, which is under BSD-2-Clause.  This is how the
> > licence of efitools copes:
> > 
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jejb/efitools.git/tree/COPYING
> > 
> > The trigger is very rudimentary and hasn't really been changed for
> > 8 years, so perhaps we could craft something better for Samba.
> > 
> > Well, I think the efitools model above shows it can be done within
> > the DCO framework so I think we have a basis for exploration of
> > whether this can work for Samba as well.
> 
> OK, at this point I error out with IANAL, sorry :-).

Heh, that's OK, I've been talking DCO processes with Lawyers for an
incredibly long time ... something rubbed off.

> I think this would be better done via discussions
> between lawyers. In the meantime the quickest
> way to get to a non-conflicting situation is
> to change our name to "Samba Developer's Declaration"
> (if everyone on the Team agrees) and add the CC-By-SA
> (C) notice so we're fully in compliance.
> 
> Better minds than I can then work in the background
> to try and unify what we need with the existing DCO.
> 
> Sounds like a plan ?

Certainly.  I was just exploring willingness to seek a unification with
the current DCO process ... I fully accept that it requires mature
consideration on all sides to ensure it goes smoothly and nothing is
forgotten, so there's absolutely no need to rush it.

James