[Users] Proposed change charter GPL -> OSI Approved licenses

[Malte Stretz]

Hi Barry et al,

you've seen it already but for the record, below is a copy of my mail I sent 
to founders@ only which triggered this request.

----8<----

I know I am a bit late to the party. One reason is that it isn't really clear 
to me yet if my employer (Silpion) as a Gold Partner may be involved here or 
not.  Since I see a lot of Zimbra/Synacor staff posting I guess so. To be sure 
I signed up with my private mail address and all I say is solely my personal 
opinion for now.

I read the draft and generally I concur.


There is just one thing I have an issue with, in the Goals:

> * To promote the use and development of the F/LOSS Zimbra Server [GPL]
> * To promote the change of the ZCS UI and Zimlets to a GPL license or find an
> alternative development project for this.

My issue is the explicit mentioning of the (which?) GPL here. Not that I don't 
like the GPL per se but I think it is maybe not the best choice for Zimbra as 
it is.


TL;DR of what follows: I think an explicit license choice should not be put 
into the charter but a more general reference to an "OSI Approved" license, 
maybe even narrowing it down to a pick from their list of popular licenses.


Fact is that the current ZCS is an open core product and the owner of the day 
makes money by selling commercial extras (which is so far totally fine with 
me). This is only possible due to the Contributor Agreement which lets Zimbra, 
Inc./Synacor re-release the product with their own extensions under their 
EULA. But this also means that *only* they or whoever buys Zimbra next have 
the ability to do so. I am not really allowed to use parts (say, the JAR files 
with the zmprov API) in my closed source product or create eg. an Storage 
Provider under an incompatible license.

Extending the GPL to the Zimlets which are currently somehow excluded from the 
GPL by a sorta-matter-of-fact linking exception would make this situation even 
worse (from a 3rd party commecial entity PoV).

Compatibility is also generally an issue here: Right now the Zimbra codebase 
combines GPLv2 code with ALv2. I think there was some hand-wavvy talking by 
Telligent abut their lawyers having looked into this issue when they changed 
licenses and people told them so. But both the ASF and the FSF say that this 
combination isn't valid. So at least a change to the GPLv3 would be necessary.

When the change would be done, a linking exception could be added which would 
allow other people to rely on the Zimbra libraries. But might also bereave the 
Owner of the monopole of shipping extensions under a closed source license.

Which might be ok with Synacor or maybe not. But if it is, maybe a change to 
an even more permissive license like the AL would be better? Maybe the Zimbra 
Project should even join some existing foundation like the ASF or Eclipse at 
some point? Both possibilities which would be made impossible if the GPL was 
set in stone.

Right now the Contributor Agreement has one advantage: A license change is 
actually possible without much headaches. (I was part of the SpamAssassin team 
when we relicensed from GPLv2 to ALv2 when we joined the ASF and even for 
that relatively small codebase it was quite a bit of work.) That possibility 
would be lost if the Owner goes bust. (The whole licensing situation with the 
Zimbra and the Zeta Alliance is actually very similar to the issues the KDE 
Free Qt Foundation.)


So long. Thanks for reading and keep up the good work :-)

Cheers,
Malte


On Wednesday, March 16, 2016 08:22:34 PM Barry De Graaff wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I am very happy that the charter has been approved!
> 
> No directors yet, but I want to propose the following change to the charter,
> with full approval of the directors (so I guess next week)
> 
> Replace:
> * To promote the use and development of the F/LOSS Zimbra Server [GPL]
> * To promote the change of the ZCS UI and Zimlets to a GPL license or find
> an alternative development project for this.
> 
> With:
> 
> * To promote the use and development of the F/LOSS Zimbra Server.
> * To promote the use of OSI Approved licenses by Zimbra Inc.
> * To promote the use of OSI Approved licenses by others that do not conflict
> with the upstream project.
> 
> Regards, Barry