Hello All,
As promised, here is the follow-up as explained to me by our Lawyers.
According to our lawyers, the problem with the license is in the "Reciprocity" section
(section 5) in regard to patents. Here is an example (paraphrased by me):
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Suppose that company x contributed some code to the Apache project we want to use (OJB
in this case).
Later company x comes out with a product completely unrelated to OJB that infringes
one of [our] patents. [we] cannot bring a lawsuit against company x to protect our
patent without losing the right to use OJB (since company x contributed to it)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So in this example we would be left with a choice:
1 - protect our patent and give up the right to use OJB.
Or
2 - continue to use OJB but do nothing to protect the patent.
Reading over that section (on Reciprocity) I can see the point. Basically Our lawyers
are saying that we (as a company) have great value in our patents, and cannot take the
risk. Btw the Mozilla Public License poses a similar risk.
The really bad news is that this applies to both source and binary distributions.
Here is another example:
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/[EMAIL PROTECTED]&msgNo=35
And put another way ...
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/[EMAIL PROTECTED]&msgNo=18
And here is the discussion list:
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/[EMAIL PROTECTED]&by=thread
I do not mean to imply that the license is bad in anyway. However, this is bad news
for *me*!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Celestino
SAS Research and Development
919 - 531 - 9425
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
SAS - The Power to Know
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Mahler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 1:59 AM
To: OJB Users List
Subject: Re: Thoughts on OJB licensing
Hi Bob,
The ASF Licence, being based on the BSD license, is one of the most
liberal license available in the open source arena.
It's one of the declared aims of the ASF to allow any usage that does
not violate copyrights even in commercial projects.
So your company could even take OJB, add some bells and whistles and
give it another label and sell it under a different brand as commercial
product. As long as you maintain the authorship notice in all files. (That's what IBM
is doing with Apache HTTP and Tomcat)
I firmly believe that future versions of the ASF License will continue
this liberal style. Otherwise it won't make sense for big companies to
contribute their manpower into the Apache projects.
I've no idea what your lawyers are talking about. They should give us
some more details...
cheers,
Thomas
Robert J Celestino wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I was wondering what everyone's thoughts were on the licensing of OJB.
> I would very much like to incorporate OJB into our next project, a comercial
> project. However the legal department is balking at the proposed changes to the
> Apache License. Their position is that the current Apache license is acceptable, but
> *proposed* changes are not.
>
> I am not a lawyer (much to my Dad's dismay) but I am wondering what
> everyone out there is doing.
>
> Thanks
> Bob c
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Bob Celestino
> SAS Research and Development
> 919 - 531 - 9425
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> SAS - The Power to Know
>
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