Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
Both wrong? :-) :-)Steven Noels wrote:Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:I'm not going to put another jar in our dependencies that is LGPL also.You are not _allowed_ to do so.Actually, we can. It depends on whom you ask ;-)
Ok, let me try to explain the rationale behind GPL/LGPL for inclusion in the ASF codebases.
I believe that everyone will know why GPL is "no-no" for us: it's a "viral" license, every modification to some GPL code, and everything linked against some GPL code _needs_ to be re-released as GPL.
Now, the folks at GNU one day, seeing the drawbacks imposed by this licensing scheme (not many wanted to release software using a GPL licensed library) decided to come out with a "Lesser" GPL (LGPL).
LPGL has one small caveat in it: you can LINK against that library and not be forced to re-release your code as GPL (however, if you modify the library itself, your modifications will have to be licensed under LGPL again, it is still "viral" on that part).
Legally there is nothing preventing us (Apache) to base some of our work on a LGPL licensed library, then, for real, you can link against, put it in CVS, do whatever you want. But there is one tricky little detail:
If (for example) we, the ASF, decided to get the library and make some modifications to it, or, scarier though, we _had_ to "fork" the library for our own needs (imagine, the orignal author changes from LGPL to something else, full GPL for example -as happened lately to the MySQL JDBC drivers- or even worse, decides the library will only be distributed as "commercial software"), then we would be utterly f***ed.
Ethically the ASF does not develops software under a "viral" license, therefore, given the "partial virality" of LGPL, we wouldn't be able to "fork" and maintain such a library. We wouldn't even be able to change the license, all modifications would have to be LGPL, so, we either would have to rewrite the whole thing, or get rid of the offending bits and bobs...
Soooo, I'd say, if you see the word GPL somewhere (with or without the leading L) my answer is usually no, because now or in the future it could/will create problems...
My 2c...
Pier
BTW, this whole argument about Charts is getting _so_ tedious! :-) :-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
