On Tuesday, September 2, 2003, at 10:06 AM, Jeff Mesnil wrote:
James Strachan wrote:
Just to be clear. We have *no* choice at Apache. We *cannot* legally
use any LGPL or GPL code.
Indeed, the FSF states that APL code is not compatible with *GPL[1]
(but the opposite is ok).
No. There are many licences that BSD / ASF style licences can work
with. It just cannot work with LGPL or GPL. i.e. its just LGPL and
GPL which are viral & can't work with other commercial or open source
licences.
James, I haven't been able to find on Apache web site a list of APL
compatible licenses. Do you know if such a
document exist?
One key item to recall is that when we came up with the Apache License,
one of the main considerations to it was that there would be
nothing in the license or code that would restrict *anyone* from
taking the code and using it as needed (as long as such basic
things as attribution and trademarks were honored). In a nutshell,
the Apache license gives the freedom priority to the users, whereas
the (L)GPL license gives the freedom priority to the code.
Thus, you can see that any License that restricts the freedom associated
with the user conflicts with the Apache License.
Check out:
http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html
and the section "Why Apache Is Free".
