IP Policy License Exemption Request - LoopBack

[achrinza]

As part of the process of bringing LoopBack as a hosted project under the OpenJS Foundation (OpenJSF), the Project Application Form for LoopBack listed the Git Repositories that would be carried over and their associated license.

Some of these Git Repositories are licensed under Artistic License 2.0. Although an OSI-approved and FSF-approved license, it is not an OpenJSF-approved license as per-the IP Policy Guidance document (alphabetical order):

• loopback-connector-cloudant
• loopback-connector-dashdb
• loopback-connector-db2
• loopback-connector-postgresql
• loopback-connector-sqlite3
• loopback-ibmdb

Although LoopBack project on-boarding has been completed, the LoopBack TSC is unaware of any documented formal exemption that has been granted.

Hence this issue is to formally make and document an IP Policy License Exemption Request for the aforementioned Git Repositories.

Mentions in accordance with the IP Policy Guidance document (alphabetical order):

• Brian Warner (@brianwarner)
• Eemeli Aro (@eemeli)
• Tobie Langel (@tobie)

see: loopbackio/loopback-governance#31

[eemeli]

@mhdawson / @SaraJo Can you take this forward with the board?

[mhdawson]

@eemeli thanks for the heads up. Sent an email to the board to kick off the review/approval process.

[mhdawson]

Still working on this with the board

[jorydotcom]

@achrinza Hi Rifa!
@rginn and Todd Moore (Board member from IBM) met with our legal counsel last week to review this request in detail. On advise of counsel, the decision was reached to help the project re-license these repos to MIT rather than exempt the Artistic license. This would bring a consistency of license across the entire project (which is a best practice) and also bring the license into internal compliance for the primary copyright holder.

As a next step, our lawyer will be drafting language for the affected copyright holders to execute agreeing to the relicense. We will work with Diana Lau, Joe Sepi and the IBM team to identify the copyright holders and contact them. Reviewing the contributors lists of these repos, we don't think this will be a particularly onerous process as relatively few contributors are affected. Please let me know if you have any questions - ping me here, on Slack, or at operations at openjsf dot org.

[tobie]

Seems we can close this now that a decision has been taken. Feel free to reopen otherwise.

[joesepi]

Thanks for trying to clean up issues, @tobie but this one in particular is still in progress -- waiting on the lawyers. Hopefully done soon though. We'll see. ✌️

[tobie]

Thanks for trying to clean up issues, @tobie but this one in particular is still in progress -- waiting on the lawyers. Hopefully done soon though. We'll see. ✌️

My bad. I thought LoopBack was still incubating, so I assumed we had a touch point to check that this had all been completed when graduating the project. 🤦 Thanks for catching this.

[dhmlau]

Wondering if there's any news on that, or anything we need to do from the LoopBack side. Thanks.

[tobie]

@joesepi / @bensternthal to sync and provide an update.

[mcollina]

Note that Node.js also ships NPM, which is Artistic License 2.0.