On Jun 5, 2010, Thomas E Enebo wrote:
>> ruby-debug-base is not neccesary for JRuby
>> functioning so it is an external add-on. So my argument is that our
>> src and bin releases of JRuby is a full distribution akin to a
Linux
>> distro. Maybe we just need to list this with all our other licenses
>> we list at the top?
>
> This does sounds like a good argument :)
I work for a small company that sells Ruby on Rails apps that we
package into .WAR files using Warbler. JRuby is great for us, because
it allows us to deploy to customers who are change-resistant, but
comfortable with J2EE. While our main products are proprietary, we
regularly contribute back to the FOSS projects that we use (I have a
bunch of patches to activerecord-jdbc-adapter lined up, for example).
We take GPL compliance seriously, which in our situation means not
distributing GPL-covered libraries in our products. I doubt we could
rely on the "mere aggregation" clause of the GPL. At minimum, it
would create a legal uncertainty for us that we would rather avoid.
The addition of ruby-debug, with linecache.rb and the "columnize" gem
(which are both distributed only under the GPL) took us by surprise.
We could easily have missed it, which is a bit scary for us. I'm
currently hacking our build scripts to repack our .war files and
remove these libraries from jruby-stdlib-1.5.1.jar after Warbler is
finished running, but I'm worried about our ability to track future
releases of JRuby.
Before 1.5.0, JRuby was distributed under a weak copyleft license.
Would it be possible for the JRuby team to release JRuby 1.5.2 without
ruby-debug or columnize (or any other code under a strong copyleft),
and to assure us that future versions will remain under weak copyleft?
Cheers,
- Dwayne
Dwayne Litzenberger
Lead Healthcare IT Developer, Infonium Inc.
Office +1-613-722-0711 x29
Toll-free +1-866-674-4494 x29
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