Sam, Noel, everyone..
> > With respect to dnsjava and mm.mysql, my understanding is that
> we had indeed
> > received such alternate licensing. Perhaps this needs to be
> made more clear
> > somewhere.
>
> If they issued a separate license for everyone to use, then I see no
> record of this on their website. If they issues a separate license for
> the ASF, then I would expect the board to have a copy of this and I
> would be very concerned about what limitations it might place on users
> of ASF software.
I can't speak for dnsjava but the mm.mysql position is this..
the old mm.mysql driver is released under LGPL, when we removed this driver last time
this issue came up Mark Matthews, then copyrightholder and licensor, contacted me and
told me that as far as he was concerned our use of this library was consistent with
LGPL (there is no compile time dependance on the copyright material, only on the JDBC
contract) and was in fact the kind of use he'd intended to allow by choosing LGPL
over GPL.
The driver has been moved to MySQL and has become the MySQL connector-J, who's licence
as distributed publicly is GPL and so we can't upgrade. Period.
MySQL have indicated to me that they do intend to provide (or consider providing)
specific less restrictive licences to certain groups, and that jakarta would likely be
one, but I haven't heard any more, and until then the last release of the mm.mysql
under LGPL is the only one we can use. If MySQL did contact me regarding a specific
Apache licence I would, of course, pass this on as even a specific licence for Apache
may not accord with either the ASFL or distribution of the driver by our mirrors.
FWIW I believe that I summarised this on general@jakarta at the time, but perhaps not.
If it would help I can fw my correspondance with Mark to the board for the record.
d.
