-Andy
This following is to the best of my understanding, and as simply as I know how to state it:
There is no reason that ibiblio cannot distribute L/GPL binaries, subject to the conditions of those licenses. There is no reason why such binaries can not be placed there by ASF personnel. Depending on the license, similar statements can be made about other binaries from various sources.
It is ASF policy at this time that the runtime of any ASF codebase may not involve the Java import of any L/GPL code. This is to be interpreted as the transitive closure of imports: if A (ASF) imports B (non ASF) which imports C (L/GPL), then A is in violation of this policy. Compile time only dependencies (like running Checkstyle on POI) are not an issue, though I would encourage everybody to make such dependencies purely optional.
The reasons behind this policy involve on an appreciation of the needs of people who wish to include ASF code in proprietary and commercial products. Being able to serve such a wide audience is a core value of the ASF. This advice is based on Roy and others having sought after and obtained legal advice and council. I am aware that Brian and others have been working to resolve this for some time, but I have no expectation that this will be resolved soon.
I hope this makes things clearer. I am copying board@apache in order to solicit clarifications and/or corrections. If you do not hear of any such changes in the next few days, please treat this as official ASF policy.
- Sam Ruby
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