This is interesting information, but it doesn't answer the important question: Can Axis be re-distrubted freely?
I am interested in finding out what other people are doing about this. It seems strange to me that people are working hard on Axis, yet no one seems to know if they can use it in a commercial product. Is no one using Axis commercially yet, or is it just that no one is concerned with the licensing issues? So, again, here are the questions that need to be answered, for everyone that is planning on using Axis in a real product: Can Axis be redistributed freely? If so, can only the officially released version be distributed, or can any of the eralier versions be distributed? (There is a bug in 1.0 that prevents us from using it.) If not, what can Axis be used for? Meaning, if Axis can't be distributed with commercial apps, what are people using it for? I will also get in touch with Sun through the JCP to see if they can clear this up a bit. Thanks for the help so far, hopefully this can be straightened out. Mike Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Steve Loughran [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 11:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Licensing Issues ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anne Thomas Manes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 7:23 AM Subject: RE: Licensing Issues > ASF licensed the TCK from Sun. Since ASF is a non-profit organization, they > get different licensing terms than a commerical organization would. I don't > know the terms of the non-profit TCK license, hence my questions. I > don't know whether Apache has the right to pass that license on to > other companies -- particularly for-profit companies that intend to > make derivative products from the Axis implementation. That is an interesting q. especially because if you make changes to Axis, then you could break the TCK -something you can only verify if you get hold of the TCK, which is somewhat convoluted. And Axis is the cutting edge of this problem. Here is the email on the subject from jason hunter, including an email address to hit for more info. I do note that all the javax.xml.* files have apache license headers on them, not sun ones. ---------------- Hi everyone, This email is for everyone who might be involved in implementing a JSR (servlets, JSP, JSTL, JAXP, JAXR, JAX-RPC, etc). It provides an update of what's been accomplished recently and how it affects your role as an Apache committer. If you don't touch Java code, you can delete this now and go back to your pointer arithmetic. :-) As you all probably saw, at JavaOne this year we reached a high-level agreement with Sun that they'd relicense future JSRs and key past JSRs so that they could be legally implemented as open source and also so that non-profit groups could have free access to the TCKs (test compatibility kits). There'd even be support provided for non-profit groups within a certain budget. Since March we've been hammering out the legalese to back up that agreement, and last week we finalized and signed a new boilerplate TCK License. That was the last major issue. This license gives us free access to the TCKs for JAX-RPC 1.0, JAXR 1.0, JAXP 1.1, JAXM 1.1, SAAJ 1.1, JSTL 1.0, Servlets 2.3, and JSP 1.2. We should also be getting free support (about 10 hrs/wk). Apache Axis with JAX-RPC is the first project making use of the official TCKs. They're having meetings with Sun to figure out the details of how things will work. Some things to be aware of... Although a TCK comes with source (to help you understand how it works), it is under a proprietary license and any access to the TCK needs to be restricted to "TCK licensees". All Apache Members (http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html) can be considered licensees because they are legally affiliated with Apache and bound to its agreements. Non-members aren't technically bound to Apache's agreements, so if you're not a Member and want access to the TCK binary, you'll need to sign an agreement with Sun as an individual. It's long but good enough for Roy to sign. :-) If you're a non-member working at a company with a license to the TCK (IBM, HP, Macromedia, Sun, etc), you're good also since your day job qualifies you -- at least until you leave. In a similar vein, discussion about the TCK *internals* needs to be restricted to TCK licensees. I suggest each JSR-implementing project set up a projectname-tck mailing list. On the subscription page and in the welcome message it needs to warn that only licensees are allowed to join. There's legal wording provided in the contract we signed. Happily, we don't need to do more than post a warning sign. Beginning now, we shouldn't ship any final release of JSR-implementing code that doesn't pass the corresponding TCK. It's a bit of a pain, but it's a right we've been fighting for, and from the early Axis experience they're finding the TCK to be useful in identifying compatibility issues. Sam seems to be planning on configuring a TCK autorun, so maybe that can be used on many projects and thus it won't be a large burden on anyone to run the tests. Note that previous releases are exempt from any TCK requirements; no needing to go back and test. If your project implements a JSR, you'll need to get access to the TCK. It's probably easiest if we let Axis figure out the day-to-day details and then post "do this" instructions afterward. If your project is close to a final release, write [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we'll make sure you get access right away. Some happy news is that servlets and JSPs are no longer only legally available as part of J2EE; they now have their own official TCKs. ('bout time; I bet that never would have happened without this pushing.) Anyway, now Tomcat can be officially run against them. I hear Sun's been running Tomcat against unofficial TCKs based on Watchdog, but now there are official builds we can use. Once a project passes the TCK, we can proudly announce this. There's some trademark mumbo-jumbo but we're safe if we use a factual statement. Sun argues that "JSP compatible" would be a trademark violation (our lawyer doesn't believe this, but they claim say so anyway). So for now we should say something like "Passes the JSP Compatibility Test Kit" or something like that, anything that's a factual statement. Except with Servlets since it's not a Sun trademark we can say "Servlet Compatible" if we want to. (I know this because it's the reason they can't stop me from using Servlets.com.) If you have any questions, write [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'll send the legal docs in an email following this (assuming the list lets me post a 100k attachment) so you can read the details. -jh-
