On Friday 25 January 2008, Trustin Lee wrote: > Indeed. However, is this also agreed within the ASF? I just sounds > like we can use whatever LGPL'd libraries without restriction because > we almost always don't modify LGPL'd Java library and it's free to > reverse engineer or debug ASL'd stuff we distribute. > > What's in the gray area is whether using Maven to pull LGPL'd JARs or > not, which occurs automatically.
Well, with creative use of profiles and "provided" scope dependencies, you an probably accomplish this. First off, if you mark the scope of the LGPL dependency as provided, if another project depends on you, they will not get the LGPL jar transitively. They will need to explicitely declare their own dependency on the LGPL work. That's probably what we want. For your own maven builds, add a "include.LGPL.jar" profile or something that will only have that module with that dependency built if you invoke it with that profile. Actually,I would add the provided scope dependency only in that profile as well. Thus, it's not buildable at all unless you invoke the profile. Obviously, put a readme and add some comments to the pom to explain it. Dan > > 1) Should we provide the source code of the LGPL's JAR too in this > case? > > 2) Should we explicitly state that what Maven is going to download is > not distributed under ASL but under LGPL? > > 3) What about transitive dependencies? For example, someone could use > Maven to pull a ASL'd JAR which depends on another LGPL'd JAR. He or > she will pull the LGPL'd JAR without any proper notice. > > Simplistic solution would be to move any submodules that depends on > LGPL'd library, but the problem still remains outside of the ASF if > the submodules are licensed under ASL. I think there needs to be > clearer official guideline that works for both inside the foundation > and outside the foundation. Am I going too far? :) > > Thanks, > Trustin -- J. Daniel Kulp Principal Engineer, IONA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dankulp.com/blog
