Sorry about the stale link. It was an interview with Stallman that
said only statically bound binary libraries (machine code) need worry.
My understanding the few suits filed by FSF have been for that only.
The nature of Java should be adequate protection for Java libraries and
I don't see a problem asserting the Apache 2 license for Fedora so long
a we are distributing pure Java libraries even if some are GPL
especially for non-commercial users. I am more concerned about lawyer's
perception (a very real concern) for inclusion of Fedora in commercial
work which we want to permit rather than actually violating the GPL license.
We want to get rid a Mckoi because it is OBE by Derby. But it will be
interesting to find out if there is GPL code in the transitive dependencies.
-- Dan Davis
On 10/19/2010 12:40 PM, Daniel Davis wrote:
I am not a lawyer but I would not necessarily interpret this to apply
to Fedora.
Since Fedora does not statically bind machine code libraries to Fedora
it may not be incompatible with GPL. This is endlessly argued and I
am sensitive to commercial lawyers being very careful. Their
perceptions are important but due to transitive dependencies it may
not be practical to get open-source code to do a function without
crossing some GPL code.
Read this article.
FYI, significant to the open source community - here is an article
that attempts to clarify misinterpretations about GPL:
http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/12878
-- Dan Davis
On 9/23/2010 12:25 PM, Chris Wilper wrote:
Dirk,
While updating the license page, I had a look at the source code and
realized that we are in fact distributing the McKoi JDBC driver for
people who want to integrate with an existing database. So I
clarified the license page to indicate that it's the JDBC driver only,
and it's optional.
Interestingly, I also found that McKoi has switched to GPLv3, which,
unlike GPLv2, is compatible with the Apache2 license:
http://www.mckoi.com/License.html
Regardless, I have created a request to drop McKoi support in future
versions. See the url below for more detail/reasoning.
https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/FCREPO-804
Thanks,
Chris
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Chris Wilper<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for pointing this out...this license page clearly needs to be
reviewed for accuracy with the latest releases.
Generally, we do not include GPL(2) libraries with Fedora due to
license incompatibility. Most notably, McKoi is no longer included
with Fedora -- we actually switched to Derby as the bundled pure java
database option some time ago. I will get this corrected on the
license page shortly.
Fedora has been distributed under several open source licenses in the
past, but we have finally settled on Apache 2 due to its widespread
use (familiarity) and commercial friendliness. I don't anticipate
this will change any time soon.
Thanks,
Chris
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:10 AM, Gorissen D.<[email protected]> wrote:
Just a quick follow-up,
Again, I am not a lawyer but
fromhttp://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html it seems that the
FSF considers Apache 2.0 and GPL 2 to be incompatible. Yet, for example, Mckoi
(which Fedora uses) is licensed under the GPL 2.0
(http://www.mckoi.com/Mckoi%20SQL%20Database.html). The whole derivative works
issue is very murky and I dislike this licensing business as much as the next
coder but its just something I noticed.
Cheers
Dirk
-----Original Message-----
From: Gorissen D. [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 21 September 2010 14:46
To:[email protected]
Cc:[email protected]
Subject: [fcrepo-dev] Fedora, 3rd party licences and commercial use
Hello,
I have been evaluating the use of Fedora-commons for our project (which may
eventually include a commercial angle). I am still very new to the Fedora
project, so bear with me :)
When going through the license information
onhttp://www.fedora-commons.org/software/licenses I noticed that the list does not
seem fully up to date. For example the websites of apache-batik, Jakarta-oro and
apache-commons list the license as being Apache 2.0 vs Apache 1.1. Similar for Jersey.
Also, as an aside, some of these 3rd party libraries seem to be no longer maintained
(eg., Jakarta-oro) or superseded (McKoi vs Derby? JMX?). Finally, the "more
info" links return a 403 error.
However, I did not check which versions are actually included in the latest
Fedora release but maybe it is worth checking if this page is still up to date.
I did not manually check everything, but the list of licences I get are:
Apache License 2.0, Apache License 1.1, LGPL 2.1, LGPL 2.0, MIT, public domain,
dual CDDL 1.0 and GPL 2 with CPE, BSD, CDDL 1.0, CPL 1.0, GPL 2.0, OSL
3.0/Apache 2.0, MPL 1.0, Sun binary code
I am still unsure what all this means from a compatibility/redistribution
standpoint, but then again I am not a lawyer. It seems there are some
commercial routes being explored with Fedora, I would be interested in any
success stories, tips, or experience.
If any (major) changes are pending with regard to license policy that would
also be worth knowing (e.g., following the Duraspace initiative).
Many thanks,
Best regards,
Dirk
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[email protected]
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