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

[Dalibor Topic]

Per Bothner wrote:
> Leo Simons wrote:
>
> > 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.)
>
>
> Questions (I don't really know the answers):
>
> (1) Consider application A that depends on library L, with
> these two alternative scenarios:
> (a) L uses GPL+Exception; or
> (b) L uses Sun's J2SE license. (Or one of the J2SE licenses,
> since Sun seems to use multiple licenses.)
> Which of these imposes more restrictions on A?

b.

> (2) If the above answer is (b), is there any justification
> for Apache to allow (b) but not (a)?

Hardly. But you have to note that while the Apache Software License v2 
*allows* using both a and b, the Apache Software Foundation currently 
distributes neither, in theory.

In practice, there are many apparently BCL licensed jar files strewn 
around in various tarballs available from Apache.org (tomcat 4.1.27, for 
example includes certain com.sun.* specific classes in jndi.jar). That's 
extra work for distributors who don't want to pass on the restrictive 
terms of BCL to their customers/developers/users.

That *is* something some members of the ASF would like to see fixed, 
even though no official policy seems to exist yet, afaict from various 
posts on the ASF's legal-discuss mailing list. In practice, that has led 
to purging BCL licensed JAR files from CVS/Subversion repositories at 
Apache a while ago. It also led to efforts within Geronimo to rewrite 
the necessary bits and pieces of the BCL-licensed jars. It also led to 
Apache deciding to do a free runtime effort, while they are at it ;)

As for ASF coming to terms with weak copyleft code, like GPL+Exception, 
LGPL, or CDDL, I think there is a strong indication for that on 
legal-discuss, and various mailing lists of projects that are iterested 
in using weak copyleft licensed code licensed under LGPL and CDDL. Once 
these licenses are approved by the ASF board, I don't think it will be 
too hard to convince people that an even more permissive copyleft 
license (GPL+Exception) is OK.

A copyleft requirement is trivially fullfilled in the Java case by 
putting the source code tarball right in the jar file. Then it takes 
more effort for redistributors to not be compliant with a copyleft 
license when redistributing the jar file than to be compliant with the 
copyleft license.

cheers,
dalibor topic