On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 01:46 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Brian,
You are totally right.
There is no legal issue (nor constraint from FSF) for any GPL or LGPL
application to combine "BSD-type" license such as Apache. The derived work
in that case is LGPL. The contrary is not possible because of the same
reason i.e. LGPL's "viral" aspect (which is IMHO a strength for "FSF type"
license).
Like you suggest it, ObjectWeb would be ready (in conjunction with Apache
Community) to "make a public statement" about this licensing compatibility.
We can bring to the table our experience from ObjectWeb's code base e.g.
JOnAS, ObjectWeb's J2EE platform (LGPL) using TOMCAT (APACHE). FYI JOnAS
has been audited by lawyers and this works well for them: it is used by
"critical" applications for users who are very touchy about these legal
aspects.
On one hand, Objectweb's community is very happy with LGPL for application
such as JOnAS. But we understand clearly the issue (here we count on
reciprocity:-).
On the other hand, ObjectWeb's community likes very much the idea of a "gateway" license enabling both Apache and ObjectWeb (or any other developer without any restriction) to reuse common code.
So let me ask a question:
In your schema, would it be acceptable for this "gateway license" to be a
BSD license?
Absolutely - that'd be great!
Could we imagine that some JOnAS components would become BSD (so reusable
within any other licensed code - even proprietary) while JOnAS would stay
LGPL?
That'd be perfect.
e.g. if ASM were BSD licensed (which I'd personally love!) we can use that throughout Apache - yet any other ObjectWeb project such as JOnAS can remain LGPL with no issue. i.e. ASM can still be happily used by any *GPL code and bundled in a GPL / LGPL distribution.
James ------- http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/
