Hi, On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Ludovic Claude<[email protected]> wrote: > I would like to package JackRabbit for Debian, but Debian has some very > strict guideline about which software it can add in its repositories (it > must be open source, and not all open source licenses are actually > allowed in Debian). > > Jackrabbit has an Apache 2.0 license, which is great, but it depends on > the JSR 170 library which as far as I can tell has a proprietary license > from Day software. That's a shame, as it may mean that I cannot include > Jackrabbit in Debian because of that sole library. Can anyone tell me if > I'm wrong here, and if JSR 170 can be found under an open source license?
No. See the Day spec license [1] and the license addendum [2] for the license terms under which the JSR 170 API jar is available. You are essentially given broad rights to redistribute and use the *unmodified* jar. I don't know the Debian Free Software Guidelines well enough to tell for sure whether those terms are acceptable for Debian or not. I know that a number of deb packages based on unmodifiable but freely distributable materials are placed in the non-free repositories, so I assume that the JSR 170 API would be treated similarly. You may want to ask Debian legal for a more authoritative review. Note that the license terms do satisfy the third part licensing criteria of the Apache Software Foundation. [1] http://www.day.com/maven/jsr170/licenses/day-spec-license.htm [2] http://www.day.com/maven/jsr170/jars/LICENSE.txt BR, Jukka Zitting
