Subject: [alpine-user] What / Where is the License?

From: Brent Shaffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 17:21:19 +0000

I must be going crazy. On the about page, FAQ, and in the source code, I
cannot find any recording of what the LICENSE is for Alpine Linux. Is this
intentional, or am I missing something?

Thanks
 - Brent

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From: Jakub Jirutka <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:01:42 +0200

This is a good question! Two people has asked me about the same at LinuxDays and I didn’t know the answer. A totally forgot about it, so thanks for reminding. We should definitely clarify this.

Jakub

> On 20. Oct 2017, at 19:21, Brent Shaffer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> I must be going crazy. On the about page, FAQ, and in the source code, I cannot find any recording of what the LICENSE is for Alpine Linux. Is this intentional, or am I missing something?
> 
> Thanks
>  - Brent

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From: Daniel Isaksen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:04:49 +0200

I understand that it is multiple licenses, but primarily MIT.

- Daniel

On Oct 20, 2017 8:01 PM, "Jakub Jirutka" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> This is a good question! Two people has asked me about the same at
> LinuxDays and I didn’t know the answer. A totally forgot about it, so
> thanks for reminding. We should definitely clarify this.
>
> Jakub
>

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From: Brent Shaffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 05:33:27 +0000

That's helpful, but "primarily MIT" won't work as a license. It'd be a good
idea to get an official license in place. I'm sure many people will avoid
using it until then.

Thanks guys!
- Brent

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 11:04 AM Daniel Isaksen <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> > I must be going crazy. On the about page, FAQ, and in the source code,
>> I cannot find any recording of what the LICENSE is for Alpine Linux. Is
>> this intentional, or am I missing something?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >  - Brent
>>
>>
>>
>> ---

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From: Daniel Isaksen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 07:36:41 +0200

I agree, it is too vague. This would probably require relicensing some
Alpine components to be compliant with this official license though.

I will also continue work on getting all packages' licenses replaced with
their SPDX equivalent once I am back from Spain and Oslo, early November.

Natanael: Any opinion/input on this?

- Daniel

On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Brent Shaffer <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> That's helpful, but "primarily MIT" won't work as a license. It'd be a
> good idea to get an official license in place. I'm sure many people will
> avoid using it until then.
>
> Thanks guys!
> - Brent
>

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From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 10:13:47 +0200

On Mon, 23 Oct 2017 07:36:41 +0200

> Natanael: Any opinion/input on this?

Different components of Alpine Linux uses different licenses, so it
will always be a combination of licenses. So the license depends on
what you consider "Alpine Linux" to be.

We will never be able to re-license all components to the same license.

-nc

> >>> LinuxDays and I didn*t know the answer. A totally forgot about it, so

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From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 10:08:47 +0200

On Fri, 20 Oct 2017 17:21:19 +0000

> intentional, or am I missing something?

It depends a bit how you define Alpine Linux, because we have different
release iso images and docker image and all of the "releases" includes
different combinations of packages, which all have different licenses.

For example, the linux kernel itself is GPLv2 [1]. The C library, musl is
MIT[2], apk-tools is GPLv2, busybox is GPLv2. apk and busybox will also
link to zlib which is ZLIB license[3]. apk also links to libressl which
uses the OpenSSL license[4].

We have many packages in our main and community repository which uses a
big variation of licences, so if you consider those packages to be a
part of "Alpine Linux", you'll get a much longer list of licenses.

You can get an exact list of licenses you are using with this command:

  apk info | xargs apk info -q --license

I hope that helps.

-nc

--
1: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
2: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
3: http://zlib.net/zlib_license.html
4: https://github.com/libressl/libressl/blob/master/src/LICENSE

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From: William Pitcock <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 11:13:34 -0500

Hi,

> intentional, or am I missing something?

Linux distributions are combined works, and therefore the 'license' is
a combination of all software packages installed on the system.

You can ask apk to tell you what licenses apply to your installation:

    apk info | xargs apk info -q --license | sort | uniq

While I understand that this isn't a good answer for a lawyer, it is
unfortunately, the actually correct answer.

We could, and probably should, add a page to the alpine website
explaining how licensing applies to a distribution, as this comes up a
lot.
Something like https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ would be a
reasonable starting point for inspiration.

William

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From: Cág <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 07:58:26 +0000

> a combination of all software packages installed on the system.

Maybe by "Alpine" Brent meant abuild, apk-tools and other Alpine projects
(like sntpc), because they indeed don't contain any licence files?

-- 
caóc

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From: Brent Shaffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 18:20:45 +0000

That makes sense! If there was an official page describing the license
situation, that would be perfect. Something companies can point their legal
departments to if/when asked about it.

In the meantime we can use the command. Thanks guys.

- Brent