Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
Sounds like the way to go, intelligently downloading dependencies from some non-ASF repository should solve most, maybe all of the licensing problems, and help make Cocoon more lightweight for many uses.
IIRC last time this was discussed the debate quickly moved to a heated discussion on the relative merits of Maven and other similar tools - if we're going to discuss this again, we must be careful to focus on the goals rather than on the tools!
Isn't this missing the whole point of the current licensing discussion? If we cook up a system that allows us to create and distribute cocoon but that product now cannot be used to build a commercial application without questions of further license requirements (source code availability, etc.) have we served our users well? ...
There are several blocks already (fins for example) which cannot be distributed with Cocoon because of incompatible licenses, even though for many users these licenses wouldn't be a problem. This causes these components to get less visibility than they might deserve.
I think it can only serve Cocoon to have a mechanism where such "license-incompatible" stuff can be better integrated from our user's point of view.
IMO, allowing dependencies to be downloaded automatically from non-ASF sites would help in this respect, whatever the outcome of the current discussion about licensing is.
So I think it makes sense to discuss these matters (dependencies management and licensing issues) separately.
-Bertrand
