Well, in a Java/Maven world with lots of JARs it should in theory be just the question about adding JARs (OK) or replacing JARs (also OK).
So the only problem comes if you replace the JAR with something which you did not build all by yourself, but where you started with something from the original Taverna source code - in that case you must be prepared to also share under LGPL (to whoever you distribute this to, if any) the source code for that new JAR. This could be the case where we have not provided an API yet for what you want to do. The simplest way to avoid your new piece to be under LGPL is to write the replacement from scratch - as with most commercial software where you don't get any source code at all. Now the tricky bit comes if your 'new piece' say talks to Matlab, then by the LGPL restrictions I should be able to take the source code for your modified bit, and run it with my own alternative for that Matlab. (Matlab is not distributed under LGPL license) The easiest way to do this is to in your modified bit provide a new API (in Taverna we make these as SPIs, in OSGi you have other ways to do so), say an MatlabConnector interface. Then you make a second JAR which is your closed-source Matlab connector, which you are not going to distribute under LGPL. This would be all according to LGPL, and if I was a customer of your company getting this modified Taverna, I would get the source code for the MatlabConnector interface, but not for the Matlab connector itself. I could therefore in theory share your MatlabConnector interface JAR with other Taverna users according to the LGPL license, but not your closed source implementation. It would therefore be of no use for them unless they bother implement the interface and replicate your closed-source connector (which is presumably where your company put the most effort when doing this Taverna integration). Now I think this sounds all very fair - you get something for free, you can use it as you please, even extend and modify it, but if you touch the internals then that piece will have to be shared under the same conditions as you got the software. By not going for the full GPL we specifically allow and encourage you to use and form APIs which allow you and others to do potentially closed-source integrations, but only if you leave the door open for others to have a go as well. I don't see any of these encouragements from the "Do as you like" BSD-style licences which the companies would probably be more comfortable with. On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 19:02, Egon Willighagen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes > <[email protected]> wrote: >> We got a question if Taverna's LGPL license allows it to be used >> commercially. The short answer is "Yes", but I've written some details >> here: >> >> http://www.mygrid.org.uk/dev/wiki/display/tav/Licensing >> >> Note that this is just a layman developer's interpretation. Please >> reply to this thread for any corrections! > > I recently had a discussion about the LGPL license with commercial entities... > > They found it more difficult to fulfill the requirements posed by the > license for being able to replace the LGPL part with other versions, > which formally requires a build system for integration with their > tools, etc. This part is more unclear, and I think the concensus often > is that refering to upstream version of that LGPL part is enough, but > their legal department was not convinced about that. > > So, as you say, the answer is 'Yes', but practically it is a slight > bit more complicated... > > It is good to formalize what the Taverna project requires and how it > interprets these build requirements, and remove that uncertainty... > (not having read that wiki page yet) > > Egon > > -- > Post-doc @ Uppsala University > Proteochemometrics / Bioclipse Group of Prof. Jarl Wikberg > Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/ > Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/ > PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the > Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share > of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details: > http://p.sf.net/sfu/dev2dev-palm > _______________________________________________ > taverna-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > Web site: http://www.taverna.org.uk > Mailing lists: http://www.taverna.org.uk/about/contact-us/ > Developers Guide: http://www.taverna.org.uk/developers/ > -- Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team School of Computer Science The University of Manchester ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details: http://p.sf.net/sfu/dev2dev-palm _______________________________________________ taverna-hackers mailing list [email protected] Web site: http://www.taverna.org.uk Mailing lists: http://www.taverna.org.uk/about/contact-us/ Developers Guide: http://www.taverna.org.uk/developers/
