License for our test suites

historical

Hi Stefan,

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 10:54:27AM +0200, Stefan Sperling wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 07:50:26PM +0800, Harald Welte wrote:
> > We develop those test suites because we
> > care about having well-tested FOSS in cellular communications, whether
> > Osmocom or other FOSS projects.  I certainly don't want to spend my
> > spare time, or invest sysmocom resources towards improving the test
> > coverage of any non-FOSS implementations.  If such users are out there,
> > they should at the very least contribute to the development effort in
> > one way (code) or another (funding).
> 
> I understand your concern. But FOSS often ends up being used in places
> and ways which the original authors of the software don't endorse for
> moral or ethical reasons. This problem exists for all FOSS projects in
> some form or another. 

I agree. However, I still think that a test suite for "protocol/spec
conformance" to an industry standard is something different here.

1) the test suite is not the main "product" of Osmocom, but it is merely
   a tool to test our FOSS software.  Most projects don't face the
   problem that way, as most unit tests or other tests invariably cover
   very specific aspects of their software (APIs, data structures,
   custom interfaces of any sort), and hence the usefulness of those
   tests beyond the project is very limited.

2) I believe the fundamental reason why there's a lack of published test
   suites for most protocol specs out there is that all respective
   developing companies/entities keep them private.  There are even
   examples of companies developing [dual licensed] FOSS software but
   keeping the test suites private.  The only examples that come to mind
   in the cellular sphere are the ETSI conformance test suites published
   in TTCN-3, but mostly in a format that cannot be consumed directly by
   TITAN (or any other TTCN3 compiler/runtime) as larte parts about
   interfacing the test system are left for the user to implement. And
   they have restrictive/unclear licenses. But even outside the 3GPP
   world, I think there aren't many [FOSS] conformance/compliance tests out
   there for protocols.  I don't recall having seen any of those for
   the many protocols I worked with in the past, e.g.
   FTP/SMTP/POP3/IMAP/NNTP/PPTP - so the IETF world doesn't appear to be
   much different.

> There could be some useful "prior art"; have you
> already looked for similar discussions elsewhere?

I'm not aware of a discussion specifically for protocol
functional/conformance testing.  There are of course the various
discussions about licenses in the "cloud world" where even AGPL is
deemed insufficient by some entities.  I don't like that development in
general, as

a) those entities call their software still 'open source' when it should
   instead be 'source available'
b) the licenses are for the actual 'product' and not for a test suite
   around that product

> > Finally, it also means that we'd no longer be writing "free
> > software" nor "open source", as the respective relevant definitions
> > always require "non discriminatory use for any purpose", which would
> > no longer be the case here.
> 
> Indeed. The best way to limit downstream consumers to a subset of "everyone"
> would be a proprietary licence. I don't think Osmocom should adopt one.

Certainly I would never propose to use a non-FOSS license for the actual
Osmocom software, i.e. the 3GPP protocol and functional elements
implementations we're working on.  Osmocom *is* about open source
cellular implementations, and nothing else.

But I think for test suites it is something worth a debate.  I actually
started to have related thoughts already about osmo-gsm-tester and the
existing TTCN-3 test suites.  Those kind of test suites are rarely ever
executed by a user.  So it isn't relevant to the freedom of the end user
(typically a small commercial or non-commercial operator) if the actual
test suites are FOSS or not.  Availability of the test suites matters
most to developers, and I would argue that it mostly is about 'source
available', and not about 'open source'.

> The usual approach would be to accept the risks of inadvertently helping
> proprietary competitors, stick to a well-known FOSS licence, and hope that
> the benefits outweigh the risks in the long term.

Osmocom is a small speckle of dust in the world of cellular
communications, while virtually everyone, even the very smallest
proprietary player has more significance in terms of market adoption
as well as 'revenue' surrounding the project/product compared to
proprietary vendors.  (I'm talking about 'pure' proprietary vendors
here, not the likes of Range Networks, SRS, ...)

We're working on a seemingly insurmountable task in terms of both breadth
(all network elements of from PHY to CN in 2G/2.5/2.75G, CN for 3G/3.5G,
and now 4G) as well as complexity of the related technology, with
incredibly limited resources and a surprisingly small team.  We have to
make sure that the result of our work counts, and that those limited
resources are invested very wisely.

The amount of contributions outside of the relatively small and dedicated
community of developers and users has been small (but existant!) for the
actual Osmocom CNI programs, particularly in recent years.  But looking
at the osmo-ttcn3-hacks repository, I cannot find a single commit in the
tree that was not written either by somebody on sysmocom payroll or by
Vadim (yay! thanks!).

Meanwhile, the business model of the tradiditonal cellular industry is
very much anti-FOSS, if not only due to the fact that a (if not the)
largest revenue comes from licensing "essential patents" on what is
written in the 3GPP specs.  So I would not expect any significant change
in terms of contributions to related projects from the traditional
proprietary industry even in the forseeable future.

In the end, I think that proprietary vendors interested in the test
suites would actually not have a problem licensinge it under
proprietary/commercial terms - this is their normal business
irrespective of where they source that testsuite from.  Any related
resources help us to co-fund the development of the tests - and
FOSS projects can still use them.

Regards,
	Harald
-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>           http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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