OpenLDAP Public License
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| OpenLDAP Public License | |
|---|---|
| Name | OpenLDAP Public License |
| Status | Historic |
| Version | 2.8 |
| Copyleft | Weak |
| Website | OpenLDAP Project |
OpenLDAP Public License is a software license historically used by the OpenLDAP Project to govern distribution of the OpenLDAP Software codebase and associated artifacts. It framed permissions and obligations for contributors and redistributors, interacting with contemporary licenses and institutions such as the Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, and national court systems. The license influenced projects, corporate policies, and academic work spanning organizations like IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, University of Michigan, and legal scholarship at Harvard Law School.
Overview
The OpenLDAP Public License provided a bespoke termset tailored to the governance needs of the OpenLDAP Project and its maintainers at the OpenLDAP Foundation and contributors from entities including The OpenLDAP Consortium and corporate maintainers such as Novell and NetBSD. The text addressed rights related to copying, modification, redistribution, patent grants referenced by contributors including engineers from Oracle Corporation and academics associated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley. License stewardship intersected with legal practice at firms like Wilson Sonsini and policy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and influenced repository practices on platforms like GitHub, SourceForge, and GitLab.
History and development
The license emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as the OpenLDAP Project consolidated code from contributors affiliated with Howard Chu, companies such as Sun Microsystems and Digital Equipment Corporation, and academic projects at institutions like University of Toronto and Stanford University. Its drafting involved maintainers who had worked with other licenses including the BSD license, MIT License, and GNU General Public License while negotiating contributions from corporate partners such as IBM and Red Hat. Over time, stakeholders in communities around Debian Project, Fedora Project, and FreeBSD debated alignment, and organizations like the Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation provided commentary that shaped subsequent revisions.
License terms and conditions
Key provisions echoed language found in permissive licenses such as the BSD license and the MIT License, addressing redistribution, modification, and attribution obligations applicable to distributors including Canonical Ltd. and integrators like Apple Inc. and Microsoft. The license included warranty disclaimers often discussed in case law involving parties such as United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and affected projects hosted by Apache Software Foundation members. Contributor agreements and patent clauses were compared by counsel from firms like Latham & Watkins and analyzed in academic articles from Yale Law School and Columbia Law School.
Compatibility and SPDX status
Because the OpenLDAP Public License deviated from standard forms, compatibility discussions involved projects under the GNU General Public License and organizations such as the Debian Project, Red Hat, and the Apache Software Foundation. SPDX and similar standards debated classification when projects from Eclipse Foundation or Mozilla Foundation considered dependencies on OpenLDAP code. The Open Source Initiative and SPDX workgroups at Linux Foundation evaluated interoperability; the license did not achieve broad acceptance in SPDX registries and raised concerns among distribution maintainers at Arch Linux, Gentoo, and SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Use and adoption
OpenLDAP Public License governed releases of OpenLDAP Software used by infrastructure providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in various capacities, and was referenced in vendor bundles by Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical. Academic deployments occurred in network services at University of California, Los Angeles and Massachusetts Institute of Technology; commercial adopters included Oracle Corporation products and legacy stacks in enterprises such as AT&T and Verizon Communications. Integration efforts involved middleware projects like Samba, directory services such as Microsoft Active Directory, and identity management systems used by organizations including NASA and European Space Agency.
Criticisms and legal considerations
Critics from legal clinics at Stanford Law School and advocacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that bespoke terms could create uncertainty for integrators such as Canonical Ltd. and distributors like Debian Project and Ubuntu due to ambiguous patent language and nonstandard attribution clauses. Litigation risk assessments by counsel at firms like Covington & Burling and commentators in journals from Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School highlighted potential conflicts with the GNU General Public License and distribution policies enforced by organizations including the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation. As a result, many downstream consumers migrated to libraries under widely accepted licenses like the MIT License, BSD license, and Apache License to reduce transactional and compliance complexity.