updated proposal for license changes

["Doran, Mark" <mark.doran@intel.com>]

Hi Everyone:

I hope this note finds everyone rested and back up to speed after the holidays!  Or maybe I should say Happy New Year to those reading in Asia :)

I wanted to follow up on the note I sent way back in October.  Specifically I wanted to address the situation with Intel Contribution licensing.  I imagine some of you may be wondering why the proposed change hasn't happened already.  The reason for this really comes down to feedback that we have received from various parts of the community.

First I want to take a moment to thank everyone that thought deeply about this issue and took the time to pass along suggestions and concerns.  Our primary objective from the Intel point of view is to make changes in the way we work with this community that will be considered a net positive for all.  This kind of feedback has really helped shape our thinking for the better along these lines.

Boiling down the feedback there are two broad categories of input:

1) Choice of OSI-approved license for best effect; and
2) Diligence on ensuring all Contributors have a chance to weigh in on any changes.

Our original thought was to switch to Apache 2.0 as a means to removing the Contribution Agreement hurdle and moving to something OSI-approved.  However we have been encouraged to think about keeping the license bar absolutely as low as practical.  When pared back to essentials the licensing requirements for this project come down to the need for a permissive license that works for both community and commercial interests, and protection from IP concerns for consumers of Contributions and Contributors alike.

With those requirements in mind, and looking at the list of available OSI-approved licenses in consultation with expert legal minds in the area of open source, it seems like the BSD+Patent license meets the requirements.  What's more it presents an even lower level of constraints than does Apache 2.0.

For the avoidance of doubt, the specific wording for the BSD+Patent terms I'm referring to is located here:

  https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent

Based on feedback we believe that using BSD+Patent will be more welcome and will further reduce hurdles or concerns for new participants in the project.  Further, I'm advised that it would be practical, given the way the existing Contribution terms read, to convert the whole EDK II project over to this new license form unless there are specific objections to doing that.

I had originally thought to propose just that Intel content be relicensed but again feedback suggests that, given the existing terms, the whole project can and perhaps should change to the new terms at the same time.

Mechanically the proposed means of doing this would be to add a license-history.txt file.  That file would live parallel in the tree to the license.txt file.  The contents would be the current outbound and inbound license terms and text pointing out that those terms were originally in place for contributions up to the date of the switch.  Doing this preserves notice of those terms which is a requirement called out in the terms themselves but equally it would allow us to rework notices in individual source files to refer to the updated terms in a clean way.

We should have some time for discussion and comment though, to see if there's consensus to move ahead with the change in whole or in part.  Point being that we believe making a good faith effort to do this right, based on the project's collective wisdom, is more important than rushing it through.

I hope that gives you a sense of where we are and tells you some of our thinking in light of feedback you have provided.

Please do let me know if you have questions or concerns.  That said, I'd defer to Stefano, our community manager, to arrange logistics around discussion of this revised proposal.
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Cheers,

Mark.