Something interesting came up... What if an application generates an application skeleton, that itself needs to be licensed as GPL (or any other disallowed license) due to dependencies it end up having... Are we allowed to create such
Example; Apache Zest is a platform to write domain-centric applications, and we are working on a "project creation tool", which will generate the starting point for our users, from minimal applications, to complete webapplication examples with both backend and frontend resources, complete with build system and everything. Now, some of the templates I am looking at will end up having dependencies that are against Apache licensing policy. So, is it OK that I include templates that will generate something that must become a (say) GPL'd application? Since it is not required to use these, nor will all templates have this encumbrance, I think the answer is "Yes, that is fine", and the follow-up question would then be, What is reasonable notification to the user that there will be encumbrance? I have thought of a couple of not mutually exclusive choices; 1. NOTICE and LICENSE file generation into the project stating this. 2. Documentation of the template. 3. Warning text when the template is invoked. 4. Requiring user to actively answer "Yes" on the command line that the user is aware of the result. Which of these, and any other, are required beyond first one?? Thanks -- Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer http://zest.apache.org - New Energy for Java
