In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Paul Libbrech t writes: >I entirely agree with you that it is scary, however, for a newbie, I do >understand it is not that easy to grasp both the usage of the library >and the license issues. The page: > http://www.savarese.org/oro/downloads/NetComponentsLicense.html >shows one license type, somewhat personal, whereas the Apache >Foundation ownership seems to be present at some places...
I'm just going to offer some further disambiguating comments which will get archived and can be referenced if this comes up again. NetComponents was first a commercial product with a liberal binary license (i.e., free in almost all cases), then after the company ceased to operate, I continued to make the software available under the same license due to the large user base, then an LGPL repackaged binary and source release was made, after which the user community took control of the software and under Jeffrey Brekke's and Winston Ojeda's leadership brought the latest version of the software into jakarta-commons-sandbox/net under the ASL. Earlier versions of the software remain available, frozen in time along with their accompanying licenses. A trail of documentation exists making it clear where the latest version of the software is being maintained and under what license. There has been no branching and anyone using the software should use the code in the Apache Jakarta Commons Sandbox so that they have the latest source code under the most flexible license and can submit patches or request bug fixes/enhancements against the current source tree. Users are actively encouraged to contribute and help move the software out of the sandbox. It remains to be seen whether a sufficient number of users will contribute as developers and advance the software beyond its current stable feature set. This uncertainty should be factored in to any decision to use the library in new projects that may require enhancements but are unwilling or unable to contribute. >As far as I know, the example code is also covered by the license so >Daniel's remark should only be interpreted as "look further, there are >better uses than the example"... That's exactly what I intended and I apologize for flaming or otherwise sounding rude. I just could not understand how anyone could possibly come away with the impression that the library prints information to standard output, so I reacted with a "shame the programmer into actually reading code before jumping to a conclusion" response instead of a more understanding reply. Even though I don't think I quite flamed about the licensing issue, I should have been more understanding. I did some log checking and there are still thousands of downloads of the NetComponents release under the original ORO license. Whereas getting people to abandon OROMatcher/PerlTools/etc. and adopt Jakarta-ORO has been very successful, the same hasn't been true for NetComponents. Continuing to make the old versions available from a mostly "frozen in time" set of Web pages is probably causing confusion and is my fault. I'll try to do something to steer more folks to http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/sandbox/net/ daniel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
