Hi there,

Since you haven’t shared much information about it, I’ll try to summarize the 
changes:

1. You’re about to remove the following:
- MariaDB Connector/J (`org.mariadb.jdbc:mariadb-java-client`) — LGPL
- MySQL Connector/J (`com.mysql:mysql-connector-j`) — GPL with FOSS exception
- SpotBugs Annotations (`com.github.spotbugs:spotbugs-annotations`) — LGPL

2. Additionally, there are some changes in the application.properties and tests 
to use PostgreSQL as the primary database.

The updated documentation part:

Docker HUB section

The official Fineract Docker image includes the PostgreSQL JDBC driver only. 
MySQL and MariaDB JDBC drivers are
**not** included due to license incompatibility (see LICENSE section below). To 
use Fineract with MySQL or MariaDB,
download the driver from the vendor and either build your own Docker image on 
top of the official one, mount it
via a Docker volume, or install it from the OS package manager inside a custom 
image.

License section

The following libraries are **not** included in Fineract binary distribution 
artifacts (binary tarball, WAR, bootJar,
or Docker image) because their licenses are [Category 
X](https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-x)
under the Apache Software Foundation third-party license policy:

- **MariaDB Connector/J** (`org.mariadb.jdbc:mariadb-java-client`) — LGPL
- **MySQL Connector/J** (`com.mysql:mysql-connector-j`) — GPL with FOSS 
exception
- **SpotBugs Annotations** (`com.github.spotbugs:spotbugs-annotations`) — LGPL

These libraries may be present on the compile classpath during development and 
testing but are excluded from
all distributed artifacts. If you need MySQL or MariaDB support (both are 
deprecated; PostgreSQL is the
recommended database), download the appropriate JDBC driver from the vendor's 
website and provide it at
runtime via `-Dloader.path` as shown in the [How to build the JAR 
file](#how-to-build-the-jar-file) section above.

As discussed in [LEGAL-462](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-462) and
[LEGAL-726](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-726), this project 
therefore


This appears to be a significant change, so we should discuss it further and 
comprehend its potential impact on existing deployments.

Regards,
Adam


> On May 29, 2026, at 1:35 PM, Vlad <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I created PR https://github.com/apache/fineract/pull/5899 to address an ASF 
> Category X license violation issue by excluding LGPL/GPL libraries from all 
> Apache Fineract distribution artifacts.
> 
> During the PR review, it was suggested to move the discussion to the mailing 
> list to gather broader community feedback regarding the proposed approach and 
> its implications.

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