Re: Review Request: Alternative database backend based on graph database neo4j

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:49:13 -0700 

On 03/10/2013 11:59 PM, Matt Franklin wrote:

On Sunday, March 10, 2013, wrote:


Thanks for the insight Ate.

Rene, I think we should take Ate's suggestion and send an email to
legal-discussion@ (please CC shindig-dev@).  If they say it is OK than we
continue the discussion about integrating the patch.
Although the answer from Peter Neubauer / neotechnology is accommodating on this matter and seems to indicate *they* might think this is not a problem, reading the AGPL [1] license tells me something differently. I definitely would like this contribution to be acceptable, but we must be very sure we're not opening a can of worms here. 



I agree that legal should be consulted if we intent to ship a war or other
archive with any neo4j (or other agpl) licensed binaries included.
I don't think we can do that anyway. AGPL is a variant of GPL, and we're not allowed, by ASF policy, to distribute any GPL artifact. 



As a first mitigation step, why don't we make this a separate maven module
and only ship the source and non-inclusive jar?  It should not be a problem
to ship a jar and source that only references the neo4j libs as runtime
dependencies.
That might be a possibility to investigate. As Chris noted in another email, it might be doable as Camel seemingly also has a neo4j component.
But also note: it will also depend on the type of reference such an optional module uses. If it requires explicit Java imports and direct usage of the neo4j APIs, this might qualifies as what is called in the AGPL 'Corresponding Source'. Especially as neo4j and Shindig provide and expect 'Remote Network Interaction' for which the AGPL is especially created to enforce its license to downstream users. IMO this can lead to a conflict with the AS2.0 license, to possibly not even be allowed distribution under that license from within the ASF, or not even its sources be checked into svn... 

But IANAL so indeed this should be run through legal-discuss@ first.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html








On Mar 9, 2013, at 7:56 AM, René Peinl <rene.pe...@hof-university.de>
wrote:


Dear Ate,
thanks for your comments. I already thought about this and asked the

guys from neo technologies. Here is the answer from Peter Neubauer.


in principle (IANAL) it is ok to have ALv2 licensed code binding to GPL

code. In runtime, the user will not be shielded from the GPL core, which
means the runtime will have GPL characteristics when you plug in Neo4j.
That is exactly the intent, and should be ok. The bindings-code is
development-time Apache license, regarding contributions and copyright etc,
so I think this should be ok.


I'm not quite sure if that answers your question. I can further

investigate if necessary.

Regards
René

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Ate Douma [mailto:a...@douma.nu]
Gesendet: Freitag, 8. März 2013 14:18
An: dev@shindig.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Review Request: Alternative database backend based on graph

database neo4j


Just from the peanut gallery, but neo4j is AGPL licensed.
Normally any database backend access which is abstracted away behind

'plain'

JDBC interfaces are allright to use, commercial versions or otherwise

licensed, because the end-user would have the option to choose whatever
(compatible) database they want to use.


However with neo4j this seems different. Even with only optional support

for neo4j, the neo4j integration might require explicit neo4j (Java) APIs
and dependencies? I haven't reviewed the code for this, but if it imports
neo4j APIs then their AGPL license can be too invasive and then possibly
not acceptable for uses within our AL2.0 licensed codebase.

Or even if that could be allowed, I would make sure to check and ask

(legal-discuss@ etc.) if it would be acceptable from ASF policy POV.


Regards, Ate

On 03/07/2013 07:46 PM, Henry Saputra wrote:

This is good news.

One immediate comment is about the package name.
Would it be possible to put it under org.apache.shindig rather than
the de.hofuniversity?

This would make the contributions uniform like from other companies
and organizations.

- Henry


2013/3/6 René Peinl <rene.pe...@hof-university.de>



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This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
https://reviews.apache.org/r/9773/
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Review request for shindig.


Description
-------

Review for Shindig-1911
Alternative database backend based on graph database neo4j Any
comments welcome. We are committed to further improve this.


This addresses bug Shindig-1911.
     https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/Shindig-1911


Diffs
-----

   /trunk/java/neo4j-backend/pom.xml PRE-CREATION

/trunk/java/neo4j-backend/src/main/java/de/hofuniversity/iisys/graphb
ackend/Constants.java
PRE-CREATION

/trunk/java/neo4j-backend/src/main/java/de/hofuniversity/iisys/graphb
ackend/GraphAPIModule.java
PRE-CREATION

/trunk/java/neo4j-backend/src/main/java/de/hofuniversity/iisys/graphb
ackend/GraphConfig.java
PRE-CREATION

/trunk/java/neo4j-backend/src/main/java/de/hofuniversity/iisys/graphb
ackend/GuiceModule.java
PRE-CREATION

/trunk/java/neo4j-backend/src/main/java/de/hofuniversity/iisys/graphb
acke

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