This is one of those questions where, if I was in the US I would ask you to
seek legal advice. A nice thing about open source is that you can talk to
the software foundations that define these licenses and ask questions (they
all have a mandate to support or foster open source). You may still wish to
talk to a legal rep of course.
Have a read of this: http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
There is a bit of a difference between extending or customizing Tomcat with
additional functionality (you cannot use GPL code for this) and using it
for its intended purpose of of running a web archive (which can be any
license). If you want to include both in a "product" your installer can
take care of the details - install tomcat (or ask your user to) and then
install geoserver.war into the correct webapps directory.
Aside: GeoServer works with Tomcat by use of the Java Enterprise Edition
APIs (such as "Servlet" distributed as GPL+CP). The "CP" defines a class
path exception allowing Java to make use code that loaded in through a
class loader. This is similar to the language in LGPL (where code that was
compiled elsewhere is connected up via a C linker).
For this Servlet interface we have two projects playing this game. Apache
Tomcat (implementing a server that makes use of this API to talk to web
applications) and GeoServer (implementing a web application and trusting an
application server will be around to answer HTTP requests and lifecycle
control).
The exception you cite was made for the GeoTools library extends Eclipse
Modelling Framework base classes distributed under an EPL license.
GeoServer would not compile without the use of these classes. Both Apache
Tomcat and GeoServer can be compiled without each other.
If you are really concerned about Tomcat you can do what we did for
GeoServer - making use of a smaller application server called Jetty.
Jody
--
Jody Garnett
On 18 December 2014 at 12:40, Dhondt, Michael <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
> I have some licensing questions related to GeoServer since it is licensed
>
> as GPL. GeoServer is a Java servlet. As such, it runs inside of a servlet
>
> container, such as Apache Tomcat. Apache Tomcat is release under Apache
>
> license which states GPLv3 software cannot be included in Apache projects.
>
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
>
>
>
> I was interested in introducing GeoServer into one of my product lines as
>
> an additional feature; however, the GPL license limits me from doing so.
>
> Furthermore, the suggested Apache Tomcat servlet container by the GeoServer
>
> community forbids this as well due to the GPL license. I see there have
>
> been some exceptions made for Eclipse. Am I missing something here?
>
>
>
> I was going to include the GeoServer source code and licensing. My product
>
> would not need to be linked to or combined with GeoServer; however, I would
>
> prefer to distribute it with Apache Tomcat server. Please assist me if I am
>
> mistaken in some way.
>
>
>
>
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