Hello dear Fineract friends.

I saw that https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-721  has been opened 
regarding this discussion in Liquibase to FSL - and since I've been following 
earlier similar discussion I am almost certain that using Liquibase (if it is a 
mandatory dependency of Fineract) is going a hard "no".

This is a very similar case like the earlier Akka licence change to BSL. I am 
copying here what I wrote in LEGAL-721. I am not a lawyer and not a legal 
committe member, so I guess you need to wait for Roman or someone from the 
legal commitee to confirm this but i am very convinced the answer will be "no" 
(unless Liquibase is an optional dependency for Fineract, which I highly doubt 
- looking what Liquibase is). 

However I strongly advince to hold on with releasing Fineract untill the issue 
is resolved and at the very least until official answer from Legal comes.

Here is my comment in LEGAL-721

This has been discussed and "hard no" from Roman Shaposhnik was given [2].

[1] Change og licence of Akka to BSL: 
https://akka.io/blog/why-we-are-changing-the-license-for-akka

[2] Akka BSL Licence change discussion - 
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-620



The only exception I think is if the software in question is optional feature - 
then X-Rated licences are possible. The main reaason why we do not allow such 
software is that when we have a mandatory dependency, we basically force our 
users to abide to the licence which might limit them not us. So while Fineract 
is not afffected, the users of Fineract might be and that limits the use of ASF 
software, which is not something ASF allows

I guess the options are:

a) stay as long as possible on ALv2 licenced version of Liguibase
b) find a replacement
c) vendor it in Fineract and keep fixing/patching issues on your own
d) fork Liquibase (or maybe someone already did) and incubate it as Pekko did 
(but this a hard path and needs people who will create a PMC)

J.



On 2025/11/09 03:41:24 VICTOR MANUEL ROMERO RODRIGUEZ wrote:
> James,
> 
> Thank you for the notification.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Victor
> 
> 
> 
> El mié, 5 nov 2025 a las 9:58, James Dailey (<[email protected]>) escribió:
> 
> > Small news:
> > The liquibase license is changing to Functional Source License (FSL)
> >
> > https://www.liquibase.com/blog/liquibase-community-for-the-future-fsl
> >
> > I don't believe this has any impact on us, as we are not offering a
> > commercial version of Liquibase itself but rather our users would have it
> > in their Production environments, which is still not a problem.
> >
> >
> >
> 

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