On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, Jan Høydahl / Cominvent wrote:
We could implement the decoder without distributing tnef.jar, using Class.forName() and simply disabling the decoder if the jar is not on classpath? Then it is up to the user to download the jar and thereby accept the GPL license.
I've got a feeling that that may still be too closely linked to be allowed, but hopefully someone else can point us to the answer.
There's nothing stopping you writing a GPL licensed parser with a hard dependency, and including it yourself though. However, if you want an Apache Licensed version so that it can be included directly in the official distribution of Tika, extending the HDGF not-quite-LZW decoder is probably the best way
OR we could ask the copyright-holder to explicitly license the package to the ASF for use in Tika only. He says in README: "For non-GPL commercial licensing please contact the address below."
I doubt they'd go for it, but you could always ask. The issue is that by making an ASL licensed version, anyone could then use that version under the apache license, and included it in their own non-GPL projects, which presumably the original author doesn't want to happen. (There's no such thing as Apache Licensed for one project only, either the software is Apache licensed or it isn't)
Nick
