On 06/02/2022 00:34, Hans-Juergen Rennau wrote:
Would the integration of Jena components into an OpenSource project under the
3-clause BSD License be possible?
Firstly - it's good to get this sorted out at the start. Changing
licenses is messy and sometimes impossible.
This is not official, formal advice. The only way to get that is to have
a legal contract in place. i.e. a pay a lawyer.
Long answer:
There are two cases:
1/ The other project's code is 3-clause BSD.
2/ The other project produces a "product" that is 3-clause BSD.
The Apache License (AL2) in a dependency and 3-clause BSD are compatible
but it depends on what else the other project includes as to the overall
situation.
"product" here being an artifact that combines the dependencies and
other project's code.
1 - yes, The Apache License and 3-clause BSD are compatible.
This is mixing at the point of use. e.g. I'm running GPL software
(Linux, Java), MIT, BSD, ... while developing for Jena on my local machine.
This is the situation if the open project is a github repo, and the end
user builds it, pulling in the dependencies themselves, or if the
project puts jars of only it's own code on to maven central.
The end user is building the system.
2 - the overall product license depends on the other dependencies.
The open source product combines dependencies, whether by including
source code or packaging binaries (uber jars or zipp'ed assemblies).
For example - Fuseki.
If all the dependencies are BSD or AL2, I don't believe there is an issue.
If a dependency is GPL, then GPL applies:
See in particular
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#apache2
https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
Andy
