[TangerineSDR] Tangerine licensing

Tue Apr 7 14:48:43 EDT 2020

Yes, I agree! I meant that I'd be willing to serve as a trial for applying
a license to a project and communicating it to users, once we've made a
decision what those license(s) should be. I will of course be waiting for
an agreement to be made, and I appreciate the time taken to make it a
thoughtful one.

I have plenty to do for my software before it is even ready for
distribution, so licensing is not holding me up in any way.

Didn't intend to add any rush; only enthusiasm intended!

Best wishes,

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 2:32 PM Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. <
nathaniel.frissell at scranton.edu> wrote:

> Thanks, Aidan. I’ve already looped David and Kristina into discussions.
>
>
>
> Also, don’t go rushing off to be a “license” guinea pig… we want to come
> to the right agreement on all of this.
>
>
>
> We’ll have more in a bit!
>
>
>
> 73 de Nathaniel
>
>
>
> *From:* Aidan Montare <aam141 at case.edu>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 7, 2020 1:48 PM
> *To:* TAPR TangerineSDR Modular Software Defined Radio <
> tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org>
> *Cc:* Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. <nathaniel.frissell at scranton.edu>;
> David Kazdan <dxk10 at cwru.edu>; Kristina Collins <kvc2 at case.edu>; John
> Gibbons <jcg66 at case.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [TangerineSDR] Tangerine licensing
>
>
>
> Nathaniel,
>
>
>
> Just to add CWRU to the list of those interested: I look forward to
> learning what's decided in regards to licensing. I have software for the
> frequency analysis experiments that is ready for initial testing, and would
> be happy to volunteer as a licensing guinea pig if that is helpful.
>
>
>
> Thanks also to Rob for sharing your experiences. I will be looking into
> the use of SPDX-license identifiers in our projects.
>
>
>
> 73's,
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 11:42 AM Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. via
> TangerineSDR <tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Phil,
>
>
>
> I will definitely do this. I actually started to have a conversation with
> them regarding this shortly before this whole COVID-19 thing started.
>
>
>
> 73 de Nathaniel
>
>
>
> *From:* Phil Erickson <phil.erickson at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 7, 2020 11:36 AM
> *To:* TAPR TangerineSDR Modular Software Defined Radio <
> tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org>
> *Cc:* Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. <nathaniel.frissell at scranton.edu>;
> Engelke, Bill <bill.engelke at ua.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [TangerineSDR] Tangerine licensing
>
>
>
> Hi Nathaniel,
>
>
>
>   I strongly encourage working through U of S's infrastructure.  MIT has
> an entire Technology Licensing Office with experts on all the open source
> licenses as well as how they mesh with Institute policy and with sponsor
> grants like NSF.  It is not straightforward at all.  For example, our
> DigitalRF package had to go through an extensive licensing approval process
> before we were allowed to distribute it.
>
>
>
> 73
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 11:30 AM Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. via
> TangerineSDR <tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all, and thanks Bill and John,
>
> We definitely need to get this worked out very soon. I think this is not
> as simple as we would like it to be, since federal funding is involved and
> multiple institutions are officially listed as collaborators. I think we
> are going to need to establish a policy that all of the institutions can
> sign on to.
>
> We have at least one guiding document that we need to adhere to, and that
> is the originally funded NSF proposal. Along with that, there and the laws
> and rules associated with accepting that funding, as well as the
> institutional rules from each of the collaborating/subcontracted
> universities. I should note that the original proposal states that we will
> make the PSWS plans and software open, but does not specify a specific
> license.
>
> I realize that this is something that needs to be resolved soon. Since
> Scranton is the lead institution, I am going to get in touch with our
> Office of Sponsored Research and get more guidance on developing an
> agreement. I'll be in touch with the PIs/leads from our collaborating
> universities/organizations to get this figured out.
>
> Thanks for bringing this up.
>
> VY 73 de Nathaniel W2NAF
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TangerineSDR <tangerinesdr-bounces at lists.tapr.org> On Behalf Of
> Engelke, Bill via TangerineSDR
> Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 11:18 AM
> To: TAPR TangerineSDR Modular Software Defined Radio <
> tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org>
> Cc: Engelke, Bill <bill.engelke at ua.edu>
> Subject: Re: [TangerineSDR] Tangerine licensing
>
> To all - I request that UA be kept in the loop on these discussions. I
> personally don't have the authority to make binding decisions on the part
> of UA, but I can make sure that the right people are involved. For the
> record, I believe (and will advocate for) that all software should be open
> source and freely available for re-use same as the code developed by John
> Melton and Pavel Demin. (Will GPL accomplish that?)  Based on my past
> experience, since the project has NSF funding, I believe the software
> becomes public domain (someone might want to clarify that)...   -73- Bill
> AB4EJ
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TangerineSDR <tangerinesdr-bounces at lists.tapr.org> On Behalf Of
> John Ackermann N8UR via TangerineSDR
> Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 10:05 AM
> To: Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. via TangerineSDR <
> tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org>; Scott Cowling <scotty at tonks.com>; Steven
> Bible <steven.bible at gmail.com>
> Cc: John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com>
> Subject: Re: [TangerineSDR] Tangerine licensing
>
> Just to Nathaniel, SteveB, Scotty --
>
> We probably should have a conversation about licensing for the PSWS
> project to get this settled.  Much, much better to do it sooner rather than
> later.
>
> 73,
> John
> ----
>
> On 4/7/20 8:30 AM, Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. via TangerineSDR wrote:
> > Hi John,
> >
> > Is it possible to start with GPL and then relicense as BSD if needed? I
> think this gives us the most protection now, and opens the possibility for
> wider adoption in the future.
> >
> > 73 de Nathaniel W2NAF
> >
> > —
> > Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell, Ph.D., W2NAF HamSCI Lead Assistant
> > Professor Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering University
> > of Scranton
> > (973) 787-4506
> >
> >> On Apr 2, 2020, at 11:18 PM, Rob Wiesler via TangerineSDR <
> tangerinesdr at lists.tapr.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 11:45:07 -0400, John Ackermann N8UR via
> TangerineSDR wrote:
> >>> We should formalize the requirements for licensing Tangerine
> >>> hardware and software work product.
> >>>
> >>> For software, I would recommend simply requiring an OSF-approved
> >>> open source license.  We should consider a copyright assignment from
> >>> contributors, as discussed below.  While I'd personally prefer to
> >>> use GPL, that could be an inhibiting factor for some organizations
> >>> that might be involved so I'm comfortable with allowing any OSF
> license.
> >>
> >> We often won't have very much leeway to choose a license.  For
> >> instance, GNU Radio plugins will probably have to be GPLed, as they
> >> are derivative works of GNU Radio.
> >>
> >> It's good to note that bounding software components (and their
> >> licenses) tightly makes a lot of licensing issues go away.  For
> >> instance, we'll probably want our GNU Radio-related components to
> >> consume input and publish output in a standardized fashion anyway,
> >> but as a side effect, this means that whatever's on either side of
> >> those components won't be a derived work, meaning it won't have to be
> >> GPLed.  And if we do choose to use the GPL for any components,
> >> properly defining the limits of the license are critical - for
> >> instance, it's common to license libraries under a variant of the GPL
> >> that specifically mentions that it's okay to link against OpenSSL, so
> >> that users of the library don't have to choose between the two
> >> libraries (as the GPL is incompatible [0] with the Apache 1.0 license
> that OpenSSL used to be licensed under).
> >>
> >> By the way, OpenSSL did switch to Apache 2.0, which is compatible
> >> with the GPL (version 3 only) (asymmetrically - see [2]).  They did
> >> this using a Contributer License Agreement [1] (which often involves
> >> a copyright assignment).  It still took them two or three years to
> >> complete the process, because they had to hunt down every single
> >> contributer whose copyrighted code remained in the project and ask
> >> them to switch licenses (just identifying them is often
> >> nigh-impossible if your version control history isn't up to the
> >> task).  Then, for everyone who doesn't respond or refuses, the
> >> project had to replace what they wrote with something written from
> >> scratch under the new license.  Having a Contributer License
> >> Agreement means that the project (or a trustee) holds copyright over
> >> everything, or otherwise has been granted the rights necessary to
> >> simply change the license for everything in the project.
> >>
> >> Here's some reading material:
> >>
> >> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL#Licensing
> >> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
> >> [2] https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
> >>
> >> Here's a project I've been dealing with recently that has a license
> >> proliferation problem that has personally caused me grief:
> >>
> >> [3] https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/Licenses
> >>
> >> Here's a handy way to make it possible to determine what a file's
> >> license is in an automated fashion (which is more useful than you'd
> >> think, even when taking into account this statement):
> >>
> >> [4] https://spdx.org/using-spdx-license-identifier
> >>
> >> As far as a specific license to use (when we can choose), I'm quite
> >> happy with the GPL, but won't complain if a non-reciprocal license is
> >> chosen (for any given software component).  Everything I write at
> >> work is under the BSD 3 Clause license, except where the GPL is
> >> required (or simplifies things).
> >>
> >> --
> >> TangerineSDR mailing list
> >> TangerineSDR at lists.tapr.org
> >> http://lists.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/tangerinesdr_lists.tapr.org
> >
>
>
> --
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>
>
>
>
> --
>
> ----
> Phil Erickson
> phil.erickson at gmail.com
>
> --
> TangerineSDR mailing list
> TangerineSDR at lists.tapr.org
> http://lists.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/tangerinesdr_lists.tapr.org
>
>
>
> --
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Aidan Montare
> CWRU Class of 2021
>

-- 
Sincerely,

Aidan Montare
CWRU Class of 2021
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