While reviewing the legal files (LICENSE and NOTICE) for activemq 4.1-
SNAPSHOT I discovered that the build depends on and the assembly
distributes a jar activemq:jmdns:1.0-RC2:jar. I'm having some
trouble figuring out exactly where this came from and what license it
might be under.
I found that at one point the codehaus activemq project had something
related to this...
http://fisheye.codehaus.org/browse/maven/repository/activemq/jmdns/
1.0-RC2
but it doesn't appear to be there now.
I found a sourceforge jmdns project
http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/
which claims to be lgpl licensed.
There's a jmdns:jmdnds:1.0:jar in maven which might be from this
project: the class names appear to match.
Now if you look at the cvs view of this sourceforge project, there's
an apache license and notice file checked into the root. Furthermore
the javax.jmdns.* classes indicate in headers that they are apache 2
licensed. However there are some com.strangeberry classes and
samples classes that have only a LGPL licence header. The
com.strangeberry classes are included in both jars I've found.
Furthermore I can't find any evidence that the javax.jmdns classes
are part of a java jsr, so I have a hard time believing their use of
the javax namespace is, um, legal.
So, I see two problems
1. inclusion of lgpl classes in an apache distribution
2. javax namespace with no apparent permission from sun.
With this understanding of the situation I'd have a hard time voting
anything other than -1 on any release that included one of the
existing jmdns jars.
Unless there is more to the story than I've found out so far I see
two ways to proceed:
1. work with the jmdns project to release a jar that is clearly
apache 2 licensed and is ok sun-wise
2. produce our own jar with only the apache licensed jmdns classes
under a sun-friendly package name (such as org.apache.activemq.jmdns).
I'm interested in getting a 4.1.2 release out ASAP so I'd be happy to
set up a module in activemq to do (2) and modify the use of the jmdns
classes as appropriate. I could work on (1) as well but think it
isn't likely to happen in the next day or so.
Thoughts on how to proceed?
thanks
david jencks
