hi, <snip/>
any way,
as a result of all this discussion, we shall update the contrib.xml
document page.
contrib.xml states:
Source code files must be under the Apache license and must have copyright assigned to the Apache Software Foundation.
Shall we add a further item:
Source code files are not allowed to import (L)GPL-ed licensed
source code, or classes from (L)GPL-ed licensed jars.
as i'm not a laywer i'm not 100% sure if the suggestion above is correct,
but we shall detail the contribution process to help people to understand
why/why not a contribution is legal okay, or must be rejected due to legal considerations.
The above wording is too rude and might be misleading.
I would say something like this
- o -
Please understand that the recursive nature of the GPL license makes it impossible for any Apache licenced code to link to GPL code because the GPL doesn't protect the Apache brands (so it wouldn't comply to the Apache License requirements) and doesn't allow other licenses to further restrict the freedom the GPL gives.
For LGPL licensed code, it would seem to be fair to link to it, but given the nature of the Java language, there is no way to tell where the 'library' stops and where your program starts.
To avoid potential legal troubles, the Cocoon project, according to a ASF-wide policy created by the Apache Licensing Committee, prefers to avoid hosting and distributing any code that links to LGPL code because that might force the entire code to be released as LGPL, thus conflicting with the Apache license requirements of brand protection.
Also note that moch classes and interfaces don't solve the issue since they could be considered a derivative work of the LGPL library, thus would need to be LGPL-ed as well.
- o -
What do you think?
well said, i will add it to the Cocoon contrib.xml page. bernhard
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