Re: License of generated code by sdbus++

From: Patrick Williams <patrick@stwcx.xyz>
To: "Giri, Prashanth" <Prashanth.Giri@dell.com>
Cc: "openbmc@lists.ozlabs.org" <openbmc@lists.ozlabs.org>
Subject: Re: License of generated code by sdbus++
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:44:34 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YF82wrt7FUCr59/U@heinlein> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <DM6PR19MB34172FAC6C40C87026A7C68495639@DM6PR19MB3417.namprd19.prod.outlook.com>

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On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 08:58:26PM +0000, Giri, Prashanth wrote:

I am not a lawyer and I would suggest discussing with your legal team.

I am the original author of the majority of the sdbusplus code and
especially the auto-generated templates.

> I see the sdbusplus library repo itself is Apache Licensed. Am wondering if the auto generated code from sdbus++ is also Apache ?  Did not find any special wording on the generated code in the license file in the repository.

You are correct that we do NOT have any special exemption in the
repository like many compiler-compiler or binding-generation libraries
might have[1,2].  My opinion is that if you consider the output of the
sdbus++ program, which combines your provided YAML with our templates,
the bulk of the IP value is contained in the template.  The output of
the program should be considered a derivative work of the templates
themselves[3] and you should follow any requirements imposed by the
Apache license on Derivative Works.

> Is it safe to mix the generated code with closed (proprietary) sources ?

I'm going to assume you agree that the output of the code generator is
Apache licensed.  Generally, Apache is considered one of the "safest"
licenses for commercial (including closed source) and that is a
significant reason why it was chosen as the default license for OpenBMC
code repositories.  The generated code links against the
libsdbusplus.so, so in all cases you would be including into your binary
image some amount of Apache-licensed code for which you must follow the
requirements set out under Redistribution[4].  Using the code generator
should not impose additional requirements on you.

> Thanks in advance,
> 
> --Prashanth

I hope this helps you.

1. https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-with-bison-exception.html
2. https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/LICENSE#L29
3. https://github.com/openbmc/sdbusplus/blob/master/LICENSE#L40
4. https://github.com/openbmc/sdbusplus/blob/master/LICENSE#L89

-- 
Patrick Williams

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