Re: Help needed to persuade apaches about the Classpath license.

[Dalibor Topic]

Leo Simons wrote:
> IANAL.
>
> Meskauskas Audrius wrote:
>
> > Maybe you could help me to persuade that folk?
>
>
> At the moment the policy with regard to GPL+Classpath Exception @ the
> ASF is that it is not approved for use within ASF works, and policy
> remains like that until it changes. (Which is still being worked on.)

In general, as long as its not approved by $Foundation, its members are 
not encouraged to use it withing their works. $Foundation meaning the 
policy "ask, before you use, if there is nothing explicitely encouraging 
it, don't use it' is in both ASF, FSF, afaict.

> Until that time, no amount of persuasion is going to help in dealing
> with the geronimo stuff since in order to pass the J2EE TCK they must
> include a CORBA impl in their distribution and they're not allowed to do
> so according to ASF policy.

Yep. Geronimo has run against the same problem as GNU Classpath wrt to 
org.omg classes being non-free, so they, too, looked around. TriFork's 
contribution to Geronimo would be easier to handle for ASF, as it comes 
under ASL2, and the ASF understands their license's effects in detail 
(ASL2). That may not be the case for other licensig arrangements, so 
those arrangements need to be discussed, examined and approved. That 
takes effort, and effort needs a good incentive ... like the one 
Hibernate provides in the LGPL case.

Looking at Geronimo from outside, the developers are pretty pragmatic, 
and don't necessarily support solely ASF components without regard for 
alternatives. I saw Geronimo work together with both Jetty and Tomcat, 
so I assume it will be possible for Geronimo to work with OpenEJB, 
TriFork and GNU Classpath, if the need arises.

> In other words, the geronimo developers aren't the crew to convince.

Yeah. In the end, it comes down to convincing the 
membership/board/legal-discuss. It is necessary to give people a strong 
positive incentive to investigate the licensing arrangements. And that's 
best done by good, working code.

> The main (only) thing holding us back from actually using Classpath
> within Harmony is the legal/licensing mess. If Classpath were under the
> Apache License or the MIT License or the BSD License or the MPL 1.1 or
> <insert-a-for-apache-less-controversial-license-x> we would probably
> have code in Apache SVN already linking to it.

Yeah. The course of action as I see it is to wait till the ASF makes a 
decision on the LGPL, then move forward to discuss GPL+"linking 
exception", and then finally address ASL2/GPL2 compatibility issues. 
Sorted in increasing order of difficulty. ;)

That will all take some time, but that's fine. That does not stop GNU 
Classpath from working towards completion of 1.4/1.5 class libraries, 
for example, or JamVM, JCVM, JikesRVM, IKVM ... from making progress.

> > That said in practise it seems persuading is needed and is not simple.
> > As Dalibor pointed out a while ago [1] the Apache group has a strong
> > tradition of debating and seeking consensus through various
> > committees.
>
>
> Dalibor exaggerated. I thought it was funny :-)

Yep, I did ;) The ASF actually has a great core value in its members 
desire and striving for maximal transparency, which is why so much 
happens via consensus on lists.

> > No decisions seem to be made unless at least three
> > committees have agreed on a common position/view.
>
>
> Now, that is simply not the case. In the case of legal matters, no big
> decision is made without consulting legal counsel, and then in the end
> the ASF board and the ASF board alone makes a decision based on that
> legal counsel (and advice and input from many other parties, most
> importantly our Vice President of Legal Affairs, Cliff Schmidt).

Yeah, I think Mark forgot add the obligatory smiley after creating a 
derived work of my exagerrated, brief take on the ASF way of doing 
things ... http://klomp.org/mark/classpath/GNUClasspathSummit/img7.jpg ;)

Thanks for putting things in a bigger context, Leo, and explaining how 
similar the things in either camp are, and how the ASF works. That helps 
 fix misunderstandings my (extra funny!;) exagerrating might have caused.

> Has nothing to do with committees or consensus. Has to do with lawyers
> and the law.

Yep. ;)

cheers,
dalibor topic