[16.0][ADD] spreadsheet_dashboard_account_account_oca: Rescued from Odoo

[pedrobaeza]

This module adds some dashboards for accounting and finance BI.

They have been rescued from some original Odoo SA code that were moved to enterprise later, and then they are evolving isolatedly.

1. Go to Dashboards application.

2. There, you will find at the left two new options inside "Finance" section:

   • Accounting
   • Benchmark
3. Click on them to see the KPIs and BI information about accounting and finance.

@Tecnativa

[legalsylvain]

Thanks for the rescue operation !

Note : I don't undertand the error in the CI. ValueError: External ID not found in the system: account.group_account_readonly

but : https://github.com/odoo/odoo/blob/16.0/addons/account/security/account_security.xml#L53

[pedrobaeza]

Thank you Lucas for the insights.

That can be a problem, as the post-install tests of core modules are not executed here in OCA CI. I'll check any possible option to get both things. SOLVED

Any wishlist on your part for features to add?

[fpodoo]

Hello,

This module is part of Odoo Enterprise and has never been released in Odoo Community; it's not an open source module. Please respect our right as the copyrhight owner to choose the license; it's not because a developer put it in the wrong directory in a development branch (that has neer been released) that it sudenly becomes open source.

So, please take down this repository to avoid abuse. (and remove the LGPL license and copyright Tecnativa; Odoo SA released this module with the Odoo Enterprise license in Odoo 16)

[pedrobaeza]

@fpodoo that's not true. Please see https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/99985, where it's removed from community.

It was part of the LGPL module spreadsheet_dashboard_account. The co-authorship and copyright by Tecnativa is due to the extraction + adaptation. I'm the most respectful to licenses than anybody.

[pedrobaeza]

By the way, I don't have access to enterprise repository, but if it continues the same there, you may want to change the permission of that dashboards, as plain invoicing users have access to them, and IMO only accounting users should access them.

[nhomar]

@pedrobaeza

This move is not what OCA represents, our values and our principles.

If an author ("odoo sa" or whoever else in the world) considers the work they do should not be copied or released in the terms they think, it is disrespectful even try to copy it.

IMHO your position here is against the values we considered since the very beginning.

You can not be looking for WiP work around the world trying to steal their work and then credit on top of it thinking you are helping anybody.

Please close this topic here.

@fpodoo please apologize in the name of the people that really work with the proper principles and values.

[pedrobaeza]

There are 2 aspects in this pull request:

• LEGALITY Do we all agree that this is legal? If not, second point doesn't matter. I'm respecting license, attribution (check first commit attributed to Odoo SA). If it's a problem to add the co-authorship for the rest of the code (tests + manifest + README), then I'll glad remove it.

• MORALITY OCA stands for Odoo Community Association, and both community and the Association goals are to share knowledge and facilitate synergies to improve Odoo ecosystem [1], and also to avoid to repeat work on it. Catching existing code is not immoral and Fabien itself has said other times that it's good if community continues any work started by them. It has been the case when Odoo decided to move account_budget and account_asset modules to enterprise, then OCA recovers budget module at [2] (and the asset one was long ago forked). You can say that the difference is the time the code has been in community, but I think this is not like the "5 seconds rule" when the food falls into the floor. At the end, the goal is to share efforts.

  Having community spirit IMO is to try to contribute as we do. First, suggesting a direct improvement [3] over Odoo SA code that will benefit all the enterprise users. And second, contributing the way we can over all these years:

  • Several years managing the Odoo issue tracker.
  • Doing more than 750 pull requests on Odoo repository [4], and some notable ones like SVG support [5]
  • Maintain and notify about Spanish localization.
  • Answer direct mails from Odoo's employees about Spanish localization questions for giving support to their enterprise customers.
  • Spanish translations and coordination on Transifex.

  Do you really think I'm immoral on my Odoo ecosystem interaction?

Now @OCA/board should decide about this. If they say it's not correct, I'll close it.

[1] https://odoo-community.org/about [2] https://github.com/OCA/account-budgeting/tree/12.0/account_budget_oca [3] https://github.com/OCA/spreadsheet/pull/1#issuecomment-1295924725 [4] https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+involves%3ATecnativa [5] https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/26635

[fpodoo]

Of course, it's illegal; we are the official author of the module, an we choose the license we put on it. It's not your role to decide what license we wanted to publish it on.

Yes, it has been committed on a development branch by mistake, but that does not allow you to relicense it. This module has not been released and published in an official version of Odoo.

It's not comparable to account_asset & account_budget as we really published an open source version of these two modules, in a stable open source release.

Do you seriously think that if a dev push the code of Microsoft windows on a repo in GitHub, it instantly becomes open source?

Sounds like you are playing stupid, for your own interests, to justify stealing licensed code. By our actions (moving this code back to enterprise before official release, our intentions with the license are obvious, aren't they?)

There is nothing morale, or legal, at not respecting the author's license and intent. As an OCA member, you should know better than most.

[pedrobaeza]

It was not on a dev branch, but on official branch, but OK, no problem, closing.

[fpodoo]

If master is not a development branch, I don't know what it is? 16.0 is a released version.

[fpodoo]

Thanks, can you delete your branch too? I'd like to avoid having people jumping on the confusion to justify their action.

[pedrobaeza]

Deleted.

[pedrobaeza]

Note that lawyers may think different about your legality statement, Fabien, but hey, who wants to pay their bills? Let's start a new one from scratch: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15/contributors-257148?mode=thread&date_begin=&date_end=

[nhomar]

@pedrobaeza you are misleading the conversation, it was a work in progress that the author is telling was a mistake and never released.

Please stop this miss leading behavior to the community.

[pedrobaeza]

I'm not misleading, Nhomar. Just pointing again about the 2 aspects I have mentioned. And from the legally aspect, there are evidences that support the open source nature of the 2 JSON files used here.

And from the morality aspect, I have proven that I'm not a mere selfish leecher [1] that wants for example to sell others' work. What moves me is the efficiency of not duplicating efforts. But, respecting Fabien's will, I haven't quickly continued this way as you can see. As my mother says: "I wish that all the people that wants to hurt you be like me".

But you have to understand that at the end, the need is there, and thus, we have to develop an exact replacement of this, so the "hurt" to the enterprise model will be the same. You just have put it a bit more difficult, and now the time we can pass developing new exciting features on OCA for the whole ecosystem, will be spent on this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leecher_(computing)

[Yenthe666]

Guys,

Come on, be a bit more friendly for Pedro. He has given so much of his time to both OCA and Odoo. I honestly think you are being disrepectful @nhomar. There are very few people who care so much about something and invest so much of their time. Pedro only tried to move OCA forward and put in effort here too. A bit of respect besides of getting mad and calling him out is in order here.

Keep up your good work @pedrobaeza, do not let this case discourage you. I'm sure you only had good intentions.

[nhomar]

@Yenthe666

I think I did not disrespect anybody, if somebody is not right I tell it, and if I tell somebody he/she is incorrectly pointing something unfair behavior as fair, it is not disrespect, It is simply tell the truth.

About the contributions, those has nothing to be with the current issue, @pedrobaeza does what he does for his own reasons, and that's perfect and whenever I need to say thanks I do.

On this specific situation he is wrong, plain and simple.

@pedrobaeza

IMO your mislead is not about if you are doing something legal or not, which IF you are or not It is another discussion we can have in other moment.

Your mislead is because you continue argument about things that are not related to the argument that put the issue closed.

Accept responsibly an honest mistake and move on.

Remember, everything and every action goes in both ways, tomorrow it can be somebody else rebranding your R&D without your consent and I will defend you as well.

For now I think this topic is closed for me personally.

Regards

[legalsylvain]

Hi, it looks like fun around here !

My point of view, after having read the exchanges here, and on tweeter :

from a legal point of view

• The code has started to be available on August 5, 2022 (See : :https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/97606).
• The code has been removed on September 12, 2022 (See : https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/99985)

A very similar recent cases is for the new knowledge apps.

• the code has started to be available on January 6, 2022 (https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/82315)
• the code has been removed on July 7, 2022 (https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/95556)

In both cases, this code has never been available in a major version, but somewhere between the 15.0 and the 16.0 release.

Your team announced the new knowledge app was in community on May in a tweet but then, you said it was a mistake on July in another tweet...

All this code has been published in the odoo/odoo repo which is LGPL.

@fpodoo, if I understand correctly, (correct me if I'm wrong) you seem to think that the code that is committed to a master (or "dev") version is not LGPL and so can not be forked, reused, etc..., despite the LGPL license file, present in the root folder. But in this case, what is the license of this code (as long as the next version is not released)?

I don't think this view is legally valid.

Any user has the possibility to install the master odoo version that contains the code (before the removal) and use it. It is risky to use an unreleased version, but it's legal.

So, when you say that pedro relicence the code, it's wrong, he just reuse the licence of the latest version of the code available (that is in LGPL)

Do you seriously think that if a dev push the code of Microsoft windows on a repo in GitHub, it instantly becomes open source?

Are you sure that the repo of microsoft windows contains an LGPL licence in its root directory? If this is not the case, the situation is not comparable.

More generaly

1. Each years a lot of things are moving from EE to CE (loyalty program, spreadsheet, etc...)

-> That's great for Odoo SA and community players.

2. Each years a lot of things are moving from CE to EE (UI, accounting stuff, reconciliation widget, assets, etc... )

-> That is very annoying for "Only-FreeSoftware" players like me because it requires extra work and I prefer to do R&D or projects than to maintain privatized module forks. But we can live with it, if this is the condition that allows us to continue to use this beautiful tool which is improving year after year.

In that second case, if the privatized code is interesting, the code is recovered sooner or later, by the community (OCA or not), starting from the last commit that was Opensource (LGPL).

about the tone of the exchanges

@fpodoo, I understand your embarrassment, following the fact that Odoo commited this code by mistake under the LGPL license for 1 month, but I think your request could be expressed without legal threat (by implying that it is illegal) and without insult ("playing stupid", etc. ...) I have the impression that @pedrobaeza was able to compose and listen : the proof is that he was very reactive between your request and the closing of the PR and the deletion of the branch (In a few hours, during the week-end ! That's much better than Flectra, don't you think ? ;-))

I think I did not disrespect anybody

@nhomar, I tend to agree with @Yenthe666 : calling someone a thief in the first message is generally considered disrespectful. ;-)

Finally, what bothers me the most is that you can't imagine that Pedro acted sincerely and that you both call him a thief. Maybe @pedrobaeza didn't say to himself : "hey, Odoo SA made a commit error, I'm going to take advantage of it to steal some code" with an evil laugh, but simply "hey, Odoo SA has changed its FOSS / proprietary strategy on this topic, (as Odoo SA has done many many many times before on other topics), I'm going to fork some open source code, before it is privatised", which is a very common operation performed by the Open Source Community (of Odoo and elsewhere).

Pedro must not have had a good weekend. I hope that apologies or more nuanced speeches can be made here, or over a beer at the next Odoo Experience.

Kind regards.

[carmenbianca]

edit: Please see my next comment for amendments. I no longer stand by everything in this comment.

I'm going to butt in as deputy coordinator of REUSE Software (a project that proposes best practices regarding copyright and licensing) and member of ln@ of the FSFE, but speaking on behalf of neither.

This statement by @fpodoo is patently false:

Yes, it has been committed on a development branch by mistake, but that does not allow you to relicense it. This module has not been released and published in an official version of Odoo.

[...]

Do you seriously think that if a dev push the code of Microsoft windows on a repo in GitHub, it instantly becomes open source?

The branch was merged on a public branch of Odoo on github.com. This merge was done by Odoo SA. The files that were merged all had the following header:

# Part of Odoo. See LICENSE file for full copyright and licensing details.

The LICENSE file on that branch contains the licence text of the GPL/LGPL with no other provisions.

The licence text contains the following line:

All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met.

If it was Odoo SA's intention to not release these files under a free software licence, they should have:

• marked the files as such;
• or not published the files to the public;
• or changed the contents of LICENSE.

As it stands, Odoo SA is not—in my opinion—in a position to revoke the licence on the code.

---

Those things considered, I believe that @pedrobaeza has been exceptionally accommodating in this PR. Even though it is my opinion that he is perfectly within his rights to use the module as free software, he offered to drop this PR as a matter of goodwill, and deleted the branch on request. To that end, I fully agree with @legalsylvain that @pedrobaeza was wrongly and rather impolitely accused of a whole host of things.

Yours with kindness.

[carmenbianca]

I'd like to slightly amend my previous comment after some correspondence I've had with people who are doubtlessly more well-read on this topic. Please note that the following is my interpretation of that correspondence, re-phrased and restructured.

Everything I wrote would have been correct if the engineers at Odoo who wrote, published, and merged the code were authorised to make licensing decisions, regardless of whether the code was part of an official versioned release of Odoo or not. It may also have been situationally correct if the code lived in the master branch for an unreasonably long period of time, or if its removal broke dependent code.

Furthermore, because we as the public were never informed that the publishing of that code was a mistake made by unauthorised engineers, @pedrobaeza was never able to reasonably know that he was using code that was never properly licensed to the public under the LGPL until he was timelily informed by @fpodoo. Until this notice happened, it is my reading that @pedrobaeza could not reasonably be held liable for the infringement of Odoo SA's copyright. And because he retracted the code in a timely manner, the situation appears correctly resolved from his side.

However, the code in question is still present in the commit history of https://github.com/odoo/odoo without any notice that the licensing for those commits was erroneous. There exists a reading of this situation that Odoo SA should scrub the commit history or otherwise clearly communicate the licensing situation of those commits to the public. Without such a correction, an argument could be made that Odoo SA continues to offer this code under the terms outlined in those commits.

If Odoo SA maintains that all code that lives in their master branch is not licensed to the public under the LGPL, and/or that the entities within Odoo SA who are authorised to make licensing decisions do not authorise the licensing of any code in that branch until a versioned release, then this should be clearly communicated. Although given how Git commit history works, it is unclear to me what that might look like. Perhaps don't include the licensing header until the versioned release? But that would only apply to new files. Or perhaps include a line in LICENSE or README that says that the licence only applies to code in version-tagged commits. Such a change would, however, be a rather sad outcome for free software.

Whatever the case, Odoo SA probably has lawyers that should be able to address this situation and situations like it. I would love clear communication on this, for the benefit of all.

Yours with kindness.

[rvalyi]

One more detail: the spreadsheet app last R&D has been actively advertised by Fabrice Henrion (Directory of Odoo Inc., Odoo Americas) on Twitter between August 27th and September 10th:

https://twitter.com/fheodoo/status/1431380299879911425 https://twitter.com/fheodoo/status/1433107648694550539 https://twitter.com/fheodoo/status/1568472524354392065

Then it's quite normal people start downloading the main master branch to review and test the new features.

OdooMates even made a video about the removed featured titled "Odoo 16 Community Spreadsheets Dashboards": https://twitter.com/odoomates/status/1568995168262701057

So it's not like @pedrobaeza
was trying to sneak any code that was published by mistake just anywhere at anytime by some unaware developer but rather that Odoo SA actively promoted the spreadsheet enhancements and later changed his mind about the exact Odoo CE / Odoo EE feature split and now behave like @pedrobaeza was the one to blame.

My 2cts.

[TheMule71]

My 2c too. IMNAL disclaimer applies.

Everything I wrote would have been correct if the engineers at Odoo who wrote, published, and merged the code were authorised to make licensing decisions, regardless of whether the code was part of an official versioned release of Odoo or not. It may also have been situationally correct if the code lived in the master branch for an unreasonably long period of time, or if its removal broke dependent code.

I don't think that's relevant. Unless Odoo SA claims the account was hacked, the developer was authorized to publish the code by Odoo SA. The code was added to a piece of software that already had a licence, and since that's a GPL variant, all additions to that code fall under GPL too, automatically.

There's no need for a public statement made by an officially appointed representative of Odoo SA for every single commit added to a public branch, to put such commit under the GPL.

Your train of thought leads to a very slippery slope. Companies have been trying to circumvent GPL since day one. In this case, a company can backpaddle from publishing code under GPL by merely stating that the individual who acted was "unauthorized to make licensing decisions".

I'm undecided whether the case could be made for a completely new software published for the first time, but definetely not for contributions made to pre-existing software already under the GPL.

Furthermore, because we as the public were never informed that the publishing of that code was a mistake made by unauthorised engineers, @pedrobaeza was never able to reasonably know that he was using code that was never properly licensed to the public under the LGPL until he was timelily informed by @fpodoo. Until this notice happened, it is my reading that @pedrobaeza could not reasonably be held liable for the infringement of Odoo SA's copyright. And because he retracted the code in a timely manner, the situation appears correctly resolved from his side.

@pedrobaeza was wrongly accused full stop. And deserves an apology.

The code was published under the GPL, by someone with write permissions to the repo. What @fpodoo is doing is trying to limit the scope of the GPL by redefining the word "released", shifting the focus from merely publishing the code to making a public official statement about it. That's far from the spirit of the GPL. There's no mention of any difference between officially released software or beta / developement versions in the GPL. What matters is that it was published.

Again, this is a slippery slope. We must be able to trust that when there's code published with a GPL attribution and a copy of the GPL attached, the rights granted by the GPL apply. The key is published here.

When I clone a public repo, checkout any commit in it, find a copy of the GPL and every file referring to it, I must know I'm good. I need not to check any official website of the author for a public statement from their PR team, and absent that, the GPL does not really apply, because that's not a "official release".

If Odoo SA maintains that all code that lives in their master branch is not licensed to the public under the LGPL, and/or that the entities within Odoo SA who are authorised to make licensing decisions do not authorise the licensing of any code in that branch until a versioned release, then this should be clearly communicated.

I don't think that's something they can do. That's not how the GPL works. The contents of the 'master' branch have been published under the GPL already, the moment they added the LICENSE file and licencing attribution to each file.

They can remove the branch, they can make future contributions not fall under the GPL (*), but they can't prevent others from republishing what was published under the GPL.

(*) Possibly. That's not part of the GPL, but it stems from the wording in the CLA. When you sign the CLA, you grant Odoo SA the right to re-licence your code. Whether that can be used by Odoo SA to break out of the GPL is something beyond my understanding, all I'm saying there is an opening. But that applies to future releases only.

[carmenbianca]

Your train of thought leads to a very slippery slope. Companies have been trying to circumvent GPL since day one. In this case, a company can backpaddle from publishing code under GPL by merely stating that the individual who acted was "unauthorized to make licensing decisions".

I agree. Mind, I'm repeating the words of someone more well-read than I am. The details are doubtlessly more tedious, but:

1. It is a reasonable assumption that engineers do not have blank-check authorisation to release the company's copyright (e.g., their own work) to the public under a licence. Elsewise you get the 'Microsoft engineer releases full Windows source code under the GPL' problem, but the difference here is that a senior engineer at Odoo SA approved the pull request in question. A lawyer might argue that the (senior) engineer is an agent acting on behalf of the company that, as part of their job responsibilities, is authorised to publish code related to the projects they work on. But I'm not a lawyer.
2. But if we concede that the engineer in question is authorised to publish code, there is still some legal leeway for correcting mistakes. The question is whether one month is a reasonable amount of time for the company to spot and correct their mistake. I don't have an informed opinion on this. (Case in point, if a salesperson erroneously offers to sell something for far too cheap, and you sign to buy that item, and show up the next day to pick up the item, the company may still be able to undo the offer and give you back your money.)

But on the whole, yes, I agree. That would be a slippery slope, and I think there is some merit to the argument that engineers are authorised to publish the code they have written when publishing code to the relevant projects on github.com is a regular part of their work responsibilities. Furthermore, the slippery slope depends on timely corrections. If the company does not correct the licensing mistakes in a timely manner, then for all intents and purposes, there's nothing they can do.

But I'm not a lawyer, and I've learnt to defer to experts.

@pedrobaeza was wrongly accused full stop. And deserves an apology.

Full ack. @pedrobaeza has my full admiration for how he has acted, and even if the code was never 'properly' released under the LGPL, this concerns a mistake on Odoo SA's part, and not malice or even an error on his part.

What @fpodoo is doing is trying to limit the scope of the GPL by redefining the word "released", shifting the focus from merely publishing the code to making a public official statement about it. That's far from the spirit of the GPL. There's no mention of any difference between officially released software or beta / developement versions in the GPL. What matters is that it was published.

Yes, you're right. I should have been more explicit on that matter, although I called this out in my first message. Whether or not the software is on a development branch is completely unrelated to whether or not it was published. I'm not very charmed by this sleight-of-hand by @fpodoo.

I don't think that [not licensing the code in the master branch] is something they can do.

That depends. If it concerns agents that are all authorised to license the company's code, then yes, you're completely right. But if it concerns agents that aren't authorised to do this… Whatever, I'll let the lawyers figure that one out.

[aaltinisik]

@pedrobaeza was right, Odoo is moving modules from CE to EE, no problem. However community should able to fork and continue. Same issue happened to knowledge app @fpodoo told in his tweet that you can fork if you are willing to do the work.

@fpodoo, next time you should first decide if a module will become CE or EE to not get in this kind of problems instead of bullying "The Community Hero" AKA @pedrobaeza. It is Your company, your developers, you can change your mind but you should pay the price of being forked.

@pedrobaeza should reopen the PR, @fpodoo and others should apologize from him for both way they behave and not understanding licensing well.

PS: I think both @fpodoo and @pedrobaeza are doing great job, do not lose your time or energy with this.

[legalsylvain]

it would be helpful if the OCA Board could give its opinion on this matter. Could you speak about this at the next meeting ? Thank you! CC : @jgrandguillaume

[OSevangelist]

@legalsylvain @aaltinisik @pedrobaeza @Yenthe666 @carmenbianca @TheMule71 @rvalyi @nhomar @fpodoo thank you all for sharing your thoughts on the matter. Just a short info for all of you concerned. The OCA board is taking this matter very seriously. We are already discussing this. Please bear with us. We are a democratic counsel and as such need some time to hear / read / evaluate all arguments and act upon them.

[etobella]

Dear community members,

I will speak here on behalf of the @OCA/Board. First of all, I’d like to remind people commenting on Github PRs of the code of conducts around:

• Odoo own one
• OCA one
• Github one

Those concerns us all and especially important here is the “Assume good faith” part. This is important for both opinions involved here.

• @pedrobaeza is of good faith when ‘rescuing’ the PR #odoo/97606 from the merged PR on the Odoo Master branch. He proposes to take the last LGPL commit under the OCA umbrella, in the spreadsheet repo.
• @fpodoo is of good faith as well when he said it was a mistake to merge it in the Odoo master public branch, but should have happened in the Enterprise private repo instead.

What I read in this PR thread is full of accusations and claims that are disrespectful, not in-line with our code of conduct and not acceptable from a community of peers. The OCA condemns those statements heavily.

That being said, reading the Github TOS and referring to the current license of Odoo public repository, it is clear that @pedrobaeza did nothing illegal or against law or even against moral principles here.

Accusing him of any of this is, for us, an attack on his dignity and integrity and he should deserve apologies for the unnecessary rude terms in here.

Finally, as we believe in a healthy collaboration between Odoo SA and the OCA community. The OCA is fine with the outcome of closing the PR, trusting that Odoo SA made a mistake publishing it under the public repo. It has never been the purpose here to threaten or defy Odoo SA in any way. @pedrobaeza did react in an appropriate manner here and this all in his honor as no legal substance exists to demand of him to do so.

As a recommendation for the future, we would strongly advise that Odoo SA becomes more strict regarding what they propose and merge on a public repository with an Open Source license in its root folder. This would definitely avoid such a case and tire down confusion.

[aaltinisik]

Dear @etobella,

Thank you for clarification, your message supports @pedrobaeza however your action (taking no action) supports @fpodoo.

This is not about one module, or one PR. @pedrobaeza forked a public repo and @fpodoo asks for deletion of the branch.

Thanks, can you delete your branch too? I'd like to avoid having people jumping on the confusion to justify their action.

If OCA leaves this situation like this (in ambiguity) this will cause additional problems in near future. This will harm both @fpodoo and the community.

@fpodoo should clarify his and his company's position on this. If he still argues that this action was illegal or at least not OK morally. @fpodoo should change the license for their master branch. (They can do it as we see in time from GPL -> AGPL ->LGPL) So developers should know if they will be charged with theft or not ?

OCA should reopen the PR to show the public/community that we have right to fork the code.

@fpodoo and others should apologize from him for both way they behave and not understanding licensing well.

[pedrobaeza]

Two months later, I haven't seen yet any apology from @fpodoo nor @nhomar, so I'm reconsidering to relaunch this one. At the end, I have been already blamed and crucified, so let's not also spend time duplicating something that is already done.

[TheMule71]

I'm reconsidering to relaunch this one

Before you do so, you might try and involve the people at https://www.fsf.org/licensing/

The FSF has shown a clear direction. The GPL is meant to cover software distribution in the broader sense (they prefer to use 'convey' these days), see: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v3MakingAvailable https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyPropagateAndConvey https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ConveyVsDistribute

I think there's no doubt that a public github repository falls into the "making available to the public" category.

Any attempt of redefining the meaning of 'conveying' in the GPL to a narrower sense (as in the software is considered conveyed only after an official release statement by the copyright holder) should be fought off.

All that said, I don't think the FSF has addressed the scenario of software published by mistake, which is what happened here.

As I wrote before, considering "mistakes" creates a huge loophole, it would mean that any user of GPL-licensed software, any fork of a GPL project could be sued at any time if only the copyright holder decides to state they made a mistake by "conveying" it.

But, while the FSF isn't the final authority for GPL interpretation, they for sure have vast experience in handling corner cases, so I'd involve them and see what they think. IANAL, and there may be legal aspects of the situation to be considered.

[pedrobaeza]

There has been already documented comments like https://github.com/OCA/spreadsheet/pull/1#issuecomment-1296908610 and successive stating the legality of this, so I think it's enough, but only a sue will set the proper final judgment on this. There's also the definition itself of what is code, as these are JSON files.

[nhomar]

What is the point here people?:

Option A: Continue with this PR? Option B: Left as it is, just finishing the very last step which is to delete the code, then the option is simply to ask for the deletion of the branch (to GitHub) and the historic commit code. Option C: Something else?

I do not understand, this topic is closed (on my PoV), @fpodoo asked for the closing and the deletion of the code. @pedrobaeza kindly did it. end

What else are you expecting @pedrobaeza?

[pedrobaeza]

So you call me thief and Fabien that I'm doing illegal things, while everybody has proven you that it's not correct, both being extremely rude, and no apology from any of you in all of this time even if I have closed the pull request and all were asking this gesture from you, and you expect that I let it as is?

As you haven't proven any regret nor courtesy, at least I won't spend more time repeating a work that is already done. I will put in the module that the contributor is Pedro "the thief", don't worry.

[aaltinisik]

@fpodoo and others (@nhomar) should apologize from @pedrobaeza for both way they behave and not understanding licensing well.

OCA should reopen the PR to show the public/community that we as the community have right to fork the code. if OCA does not think this is the right thing to do @pedrobaeza should fork the OCA. Name can be Free OCA

[aaltinisik]

@fpodoo you can write a apology letter and make right with your community hero under 2 minutes with chatGPT.

[nhomar]

So you call me thief and Fabien that I'm doing illegal things, while everybody has proven you that it's not correct, both being extremely rude, and no apology from any of you in all of this time even if I have closed the pull request and all were asking this gesture from you, and you expect that I let it as is?

As you haven't proven any regret nor courtesy, at least I won't spend more time repeating a work that is already done. I will put in the module that the contributor is Pedro "the thief", don't worry.

Well.

Actually if you can kindly point me out where did I exactly call you thief.

I can simply explain myself better.

If you continue moving forward you will simply proof my point true.

Let me explain one fact:

You are forcing the author of a code (@odoo) to accept your conditions and your interpretation (illegal or not) of the work done by THEM, financed by THEM in a public repository that is not manage/branded and/or owned by you.

I continue having the same position:

1. Nobody owns you any apology.
2. You don't own any apology to anybody.
3. Your actions speak by themselves (if you continue with this forward)
4. All your arguments are simply fallacies

I will summarize again the situation:

1. you forKed a work done/designed/marketed/though by another person/company calling yourself a rescuer.

I make an honest question Rescuing what? from who?

(It is a retorical question) I do not expect an answer. I know you feel about yourself as the Captain America saving people from the bad guys that makes money and works to make a healthy environment and makes money (I understand you).

I know my opinion is not popular, but on this case I don't want to be popular I just want to be as fair as possible.

The simple fact that the author tells you it must be removed, in any society/group/empathic set of people the only action valid is Please remove it

If having the OCA existing is to support this Unfair behavior then we are totally bad (and I am here being opinionated, anybody can think different and that's ok)

For the OCA Board

WE ARE NOT ROBIN HOODS.

Tomorrow it will be your repository/ your code / your case where somebody else will use your work as theirs (and re-Brand it) and you will not have any chance of even move forward.

I will repeat myself.

This is NOT why the OCA was created for.

For @pedrobaeza

Do your own module and share it or writing your own version, that's it!!

Did you do it in the past?

Yes I know and thank U.

In this case you are doing it well?

NO, sorry you don't!

And no, sorry but no sorry, I will not apologize for telling this truth.

[Bonainifo]

Who can tell me, Whether we can use the knowledge code version in saas15.4 in Odoo 16 community editon

[alexis-via]

The arguments of @nhomar are out-of-topic. The topic here is the publication of code under an LGPL licence and the rights given to the users by the LGPL licence. When you publish code under an opensource licence, you have to respect that licence and the rights this licence gives to your users. And the users must respect the licence too.

@pedrobaeza fully respects the LGPL licence this this case and therefore has my full support.

[gdrius]

Leaving this code unmerged, it would be harmful and against OCA interests. Legally the code was released (by publishing it publicly) under LGPL, so anyone can use it. But Odoo SA has a different opinion. In such case, it would be risky to use this code individually by small companies as Odoo SA could threaten them with legal actions. Having the code on OCA repositories would bring all these action to the community level. As I understand it this one of the goals of OCA (or at least any community in general). About ethics. At first Odoo published the code publicly under LGPL and then they changed their mind and removed it. When they removed it, I haven't seen anywhere them stating that their account was hacked or that the publishing was a mistake by their employee and asking others to not use this code. Only when all the work was done by @pedrobaeza, they started denying the license and come up with the employee story. Which is unfair. Even more, @pedrobaeza agreed with Odoo terms and only asked for an apologize (for wrongly calling him an offender) in exchange of the work he did. Which seems was not answered. So there is no doubt that @pedrobaeza is right both legally and ethically to merge his work. And it is in all interests of OCA.

[etobella]

IMO @pedrobaeza just asked for an apology for some people being rude. I assume it is not too hard for grown up people...

@nhomar, you asked when you said that Pedro is a thief, you can check your comment https://github.com/OCA/spreadsheet/pull/1#issuecomment-1295956813 when you suggested that pedro was stealing code. IMO Pedro never did something wrong and even cancelled the PR when Odoo oposed to it. It is not too hard to say sorry for something you did in an unnice way.

Also, OCA is a an organization with some values that have not been kept. Main goal of OCA is "Establish and support an Open Source and collaborative community for the development and promotion of the Odoo features and modules.". Collaboration implies respect, partnership and union in order to obtain a better end. Right now, I only see angriness and disrespect. Please, stop pretending that you are the perfect example of it if you cannot keep respect with your peers.

About taking the code. If you keep the author and explain the reason there is nothing wrong. Pedro never changed the original license or Odoo authorship. Anyone can take your OpenSource code as long as it keeps this simple rules. Also, he thought it was a rescue, as it was removed from an OpenSource repo. It is good to remember how OpenSource software works, and once you publish it is accessible for everyone and they might do things like that. At the end, it is the same that might happen if a fork is made from the original code.

BTW, last comment from @nhomar disappeared...

The arguments of @nhomar are out-of-topic. The topic here is the publication of code under an LGPL licence and the rights given to the users by the LGPL licence. When you publish code under an opensource licence, you have to respect that licence and the rights this licence gives to your users. And the users must respect the licence too.

@pedrobaeza fully respects the LGPL licence this this case and therefore has my full support.

@alexis-via

Just as question:

What would happen if we take all the code that your team Has under LGPL and re-publish as Mine with you stating that We rescued from Akretion's team.

Then.

You ask me to don't do that because few parts of that code was released by mistake.

Then.

I argument against you and say. it was LGPL you have no right.

Then I ask you to apologize to me and I thread you to continue doing it till you apologize.

How that sounds when NAME YOUR COMPANY is the affected!?

No, my dear friends it is not a matter of LGPL or license compliance.

It is a matter of do the right thing even if you can legally do the wrong thing.

Here all of us have personal and commercial interests if we start this path, this will be a rabbit hole of people playing with fire, it is not community wise support and over simplify this topics on this way.

[nhomar]

@alexis-via

Reading with no context is not fear either.

1. I did not say "You are a thief"
2. Then I did say what I say.
3. Immediately Pedro said this:

For me on this comment, the case is closed.

After this the pending point was in @pedrobaeza's hands:

Then the conversation turned up to a dealing process of "suing" "lawyers" and blah blah blah!

Now that @pedrobaeza revive the topic (which should be closed).

It is simply proving my point true (and that is exactly what he can do).

BTW @pedrobaeza has my email/my cell phone number/ even by chat.

Acting in this way trying to appear to be the good guy is not healthy.

[nhomar]

[Old message I deleted it by mistake]:

@alexis-via

Just as a question:

What would happen if we take all the code that your team Has under LGPL and re-publish as Mine with you stating that We rescued it from Akretion's team?

Then.

You ask me to don't do that because a few parts of that code was released by mistake.

Then.

I argue against you and say. it was LGPL you have no right.

Then I ask you to apologize to me and I thread you to continue doing it till you apologize.

How that sounds when NAME YOUR COMPANY is affected!?

No, my dear friends, it is not a matter of LGPL or licenses compliance.

It is a matter of doing the right thing even if you can legally do the wrong thing.

Here all of us have personal and commercial interests if we start this path, this will be a rabbit hole of people playing with fire, it is not community-wise support and oversimplify this topic in this way.

[nhomar]

Just a last comment

About:

Please, stop pretending that you are the perfect example of it if you cannot keep respect with your peers.

I openly tell you right now:

"I am not the best example" and "I am not trying to pretend to be it".

I am not a rescuer, nor a hero, just a person establishing a point within a discussion with the best faith in the common interest and his own reasons (I am working for my reasons, you for yours, every single person has personal reasons, that's not offensive, I just want to point out that any discussion or conversation can be done ignoring that fact).

Now, in my opinion, this thread's conclusion is:

If you read carefully the thread you will see that here that statement is becoming:

No matter what and where we can publish under our Umbrella the code of everybody if "intentionally or not" was public AND If the owner complains he/she must ask for apologies if the person doing the fork feels him/her/they self attacked.

And it should be summarized in only 1 phrase:

"If the author asks you to not publish anything under your Umbrella (whatever umbrella it is), that should be "by default" respected"

Regards

[Muzzy73]

@pedrobaeza A suggestion. Move to #ERPNext which is truly an open source. Threads like these are unimaginable there.

[rvalyi]

@pedrobaeza A suggestion. Move to #ERPNext which is truly an open source. Threads like these are unimaginable there.

So were them when the product name was "OpenERP", period... And when Fabien was marketing his company pretty much as "Robin Hood", mocking the proprietary ERPs... before becoming just one more of them...

But times change and it may change again... Rushabh might be a nice guy, one day the business may become too hard, someone else's money may easily be spent to save a bad month and one day everything escalated, suddenly all the structure became expensive and screwing the community will always be the easiest option again and again...

At the end of the day just the OCA only is several times bigger and more active than ERPNext and I firmly believe Odoo CE is years ahead too. Certainly these targeted attacks on the OCA leader aim at undermining the OCA (and certainly prove some complete subservience too) but no matter the outcome with this PR, I hope we are all strong enough to ignore them.

[ryuliantoro]

If we see it from the POV of the receiver/acquirer, he/she has the right to keep whatever he/she gets at the time of receiving/acquisition. As long as at that time it doesn't break the law. And the use of it in the present and future should not against the law too (unless the law change). But the "contract" has been made and should be honoured. The offerer later action is not relevant anymore to "that time" transaction. He/she can only make an amend to the contract (subject to agreed by both side). He/she can't nullified the contract. (Unless he/she is the court or state of course.)

disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer so this is not a legal opinion....and CMIIW :-)

[nhomar]

Hello all.

When this discussions about odoo ce/ oca / persons ends with always somebody being the bud guy but in some way the editor is always the worst (because that's the narrative people love) it remembers me this video.

https://youtu.be/67tHtpac5ws

Regards

[legalsylvain]

Two months later, I haven't seen yet any apology from @fpodoo nor @nhomar, so I'm reconsidering to relaunch this one. At the end, I have been already blamed and crucified, so let's not also spend time duplicating something that is already done.

Hi @pedrobaeza,

I don't know if you'll ever get an apology, but I don't think that's a prerequisite (or not) for offering this code to the OCA community. The real question is: "Is the OCA willing to accept under its umbrella, open source code that has been re licensed as proprietary code".

I think that the @OCA/board should decide on that topic. @etobella, could you take a time in the next board meeting to talk about that ?

"If the author asks you to not publish anything under your Umbrella (whatever umbrella it is), that should be "by default" respected"

Hi @nhomar,

This statement goes totally against the basis of opensource.

I understand that the OCA wants to offer certifications soon. maybe the training should include the basics of open source. Would you (and your team) be interested in this kind of training ?

[nhomar]

Certify on what?

[legalsylvain]

Certify on what?

Don't know : see the provided link. (tweet from @jgrandguillaume). but I don't have a lot of info on that topic.