Hi VJ, On Aug 1, 2012, at 11:23 AM, vijay garla wrote:
> Hi, > > There are a lot of open source projects that have gpl or lgpl licenses, > many of which offer functionality for which there is no equivalent project > with an apache license. Well, that may be true, but I think it's best to deal with specifics and not generalizations. If you have a specific list of those projects that you'd like to use in cTAKES, we should discuss that here. > The issue is much broader than just the berkeley > parser, and reimplementing every non Apache-license library would not be > feasible in any reasonable time frame. Re-implementing was one option I suggested. Another was convincing that community to either relicense, or to consider dual-licensing in an ALv2 compatible way. See: http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a > I'm curious as to how apache > projects that rely on Java EE - e.g. jetty and tomcat - deal with the > licensing issue: they must redistribute the Java EE api libraries, which I > believe are not on the apache license. Well, Apache Geromino is a fully ALv2 licensed implementation of the Java EE JCP spec. Also Apache itself drove many of the JCP processes and eventual implementations. JCPs and spec APIs aren't all ALv2 licensed, but as long as they are category-a or compat with ALv2 per legal resolved, we're fine. > > In particular, I don't know of any java based machine learning toolkits > that would fit the bill (correct me if I'm wrong, but mahout is designed > for map reduce). Libsvm is essential to some of cTAKES' annotators. Well, the key here is that Apache projects and software developed here at the foundation cannot redistribute upstream LGPL or non ALv2 and category-A compatible licenses with our software. > > Other libraries that cTAKES uses are public domain (LVG, JAMA); I assume > these don't pose an issue for redistribution. Well it depends on what public domain means. If their license is compatible with http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a then we are fine. If not, we have to discuss options for replacing those dependencies somehow. > > Finally, users will have to download the SNOMED-CT/RXNORM dictionaries from > an external web site; why not bundle the non-apache libraries for > redistribution there? That's possible in some ways, but we can't splinter the community and from a Apache cTAKES perspective, we have to discuss a workable solution for the project within the guidelines of the foundation. That may involve linking to external sites, that may involve hosting some things elsewhere that aren't absolutely required by our users and so on and so forth. Cheers, Chris ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chris Mattmann, Ph.D. Senior Computer Scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA Office: 171-266B, Mailstop: 171-246 Email: [email protected] WWW: http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
