[DISCUSS][LEGAL] Licensing Question from Qualcomm

[Tianqi Chen <tq...@cs.washington.edu>]

Dear Legal:

I am writing this email to ask a question about the licensing situation in
Apache TVM(incubating) community.

Background, Qualcomm wants to contribute to the TVM repo.

However, because TVM repo's subfolder vta contains software declarations
about open source accelerator design(which they are not contributing to).
Qualcomm wants to be super careful that their hardware IP does not leak
through, so they want to add an additional code header and notice as follows

This product includes contributions provided by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.,
a Delaware corporation, or its subsidiary Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.,
a California corporation, under certain additional terms and conditions
pursuant to Section 5 of the Apache 2.0 license.  In this regard, with
respect to these Contributions, the term "Work" in Section 1 of the
Apache 2.0 license means only the specific subdirectory within the TVM repo
(currently at https://github.com/dmlc/tvm) to which these Contribution were
made.
In any case, these submissions are "Not a Contribution" with respect to its
permitted use with any of the "vta" and "verilog" subdirectories in the TVM
repo.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. retain
copyright of their respective Contributions.


Background PR:  https://github.com/dmlc/tvm/pull/3163
NOTE: We have not yet migrated to the ASF infra, but would expect that to
happen, so I am sending this to legal-discuss for advice
on how to handle such issues.
For now, I will block the merge until the code is migrated to ASF infra.

Here are some possible solutions that can be taken. In the most careful
case, we should still treat it as a "different license"
and only allow such case in a subdirectory (e.g. 3rdparty/qcomm or a
separate one) so that it can be isolated easily.
The license itself is compatible with apache license as long as we do not
use the code in the vta case(which we do not)

Tianqi

Re: [DISCUSS][LEGAL] Licensing Question from Qualcomm

[Hen <ba...@apache.org>]

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 10:08 AM Tianqi Chen <tq...@cs.washington.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Legal:
>
> I am writing this email to ask a question about the licensing situation in
> Apache TVM(incubating) community.
>
> Background, Qualcomm wants to contribute to the TVM repo.
>
> However, because TVM repo's subfolder vta contains software declarations
> about open source accelerator design(which they are not contributing to).
> Qualcomm wants to be super careful that their hardware IP does not leak
> through, so they want to add an additional code header and notice as follows
>
>
Clarifying - are you saying that Qualcomm have patents that they are
concerned the code in the vta/ subfolder reads on, and thus they want to
carve that directory out of being covered by any of their contributions?

Assuming this is the case - I don't see us liking this model. Any
contribution they make to us licenses patents for the Work it was intended
for use in. I don't think we should cause confusion with our users by
splicing that Work into different concepts depending on different
contributors future litigation concerns. We're not here to support
Qualcomm's patent portfolio.

One option I could see is that you split the code that concerns them into a
different codebase. Give it its own GitHub repository and release it as its
own source tarball. That would seem to fit with this FAQ entry:
https://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-faq.html#PatentScope


> This product includes contributions provided by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.,
> a Delaware corporation, or its subsidiary Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.,
> a California corporation, under certain additional terms and conditions
> pursuant to Section 5 of the Apache 2.0 license.  In this regard, with
> respect to these Contributions, the term "Work" in Section 1 of the
> Apache 2.0 license means only the specific subdirectory within the TVM repo
> (currently at https://github.com/dmlc/tvm) to which these Contribution were
> made.
> In any case, these submissions are "Not a Contribution" with respect to its
> permitted use with any of the "vta" and "verilog" subdirectories in the TVM
> repo.
> Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. retain
> copyright of their respective Contributions.
>
>
>
Let's leave the actual text aside for the moment, as, if we agree to the
spirit, I imagine we may wish to provide a redline.

Background PR:  https://github.com/dmlc/tvm/pull/3163
>

All I see here is you telling them that they have to remove their copyright
statement. There's never a requirement that the copyright statement has to
be removed; though for community health reasons we do like it when source
files and NOTICE files are not full of copyright statements. In this
situation I would have encouraged the copyright statement be in the NOTICE
file.


> NOTE: We have not yet migrated to the ASF infra, but would expect that to
> happen, so I am sending this to legal-discuss for advice
> on how to handle such issues.
> For now, I will block the merge until the code is migrated to ASF infra.
>
> Here are some possible solutions that can be taken. In the most careful
> case, we should still treat it as a "different license"
> and only allow such case in a subdirectory (e.g. 3rdparty/qcomm or a
> separate one) so that it can be isolated easily.
>

It needs to be a separate Work/Product. That means you treat it as a
different project being managed by the same PMC (in the long run). I don't
know if this is feasible for you as I suspect it might be there so TVM can
compile against it.


> The license itself is compatible with apache license as long as we do not
> use the code in the vta case(which we do not)
>
> Tianqi
>

Re: [DISCUSS][LEGAL] Licensing Question from Qualcomm

[Hen <ba...@apache.org>]

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 10:08 AM Tianqi Chen <tq...@cs.washington.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Legal:
>
> I am writing this email to ask a question about the licensing situation in
> Apache TVM(incubating) community.
>
> Background, Qualcomm wants to contribute to the TVM repo.
>
> However, because TVM repo's subfolder vta contains software declarations
> about open source accelerator design(which they are not contributing to).
> Qualcomm wants to be super careful that their hardware IP does not leak
> through, so they want to add an additional code header and notice as follows
>
>
Clarifying - are you saying that Qualcomm have patents that they are
concerned the code in the vta/ subfolder reads on, and thus they want to
carve that directory out of being covered by any of their contributions?

Assuming this is the case - I don't see us liking this model. Any
contribution they make to us licenses patents for the Work it was intended
for use in. I don't think we should cause confusion with our users by
splicing that Work into different concepts depending on different
contributors future litigation concerns. We're not here to support
Qualcomm's patent portfolio.

One option I could see is that you split the code that concerns them into a
different codebase. Give it its own GitHub repository and release it as its
own source tarball. That would seem to fit with this FAQ entry:
https://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-faq.html#PatentScope


> This product includes contributions provided by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.,
> a Delaware corporation, or its subsidiary Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.,
> a California corporation, under certain additional terms and conditions
> pursuant to Section 5 of the Apache 2.0 license.  In this regard, with
> respect to these Contributions, the term "Work" in Section 1 of the
> Apache 2.0 license means only the specific subdirectory within the TVM repo
> (currently at https://github.com/dmlc/tvm) to which these Contribution were
> made.
> In any case, these submissions are "Not a Contribution" with respect to its
> permitted use with any of the "vta" and "verilog" subdirectories in the TVM
> repo.
> Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. retain
> copyright of their respective Contributions.
>
>
>
Let's leave the actual text aside for the moment, as, if we agree to the
spirit, I imagine we may wish to provide a redline.

Background PR:  https://github.com/dmlc/tvm/pull/3163
>

All I see here is you telling them that they have to remove their copyright
statement. There's never a requirement that the copyright statement has to
be removed; though for community health reasons we do like it when source
files and NOTICE files are not full of copyright statements. In this
situation I would have encouraged the copyright statement be in the NOTICE
file.


> NOTE: We have not yet migrated to the ASF infra, but would expect that to
> happen, so I am sending this to legal-discuss for advice
> on how to handle such issues.
> For now, I will block the merge until the code is migrated to ASF infra.
>
> Here are some possible solutions that can be taken. In the most careful
> case, we should still treat it as a "different license"
> and only allow such case in a subdirectory (e.g. 3rdparty/qcomm or a
> separate one) so that it can be isolated easily.
>

It needs to be a separate Work/Product. That means you treat it as a
different project being managed by the same PMC (in the long run). I don't
know if this is feasible for you as I suspect it might be there so TVM can
compile against it.


> The license itself is compatible with apache license as long as we do not
> use the code in the vta case(which we do not)
>
> Tianqi
>