Can I explore the issue a little bit further? The question that usually arises on Ant is not the storing and distribution of LGPL code itself, but the storing of code that "links" with or depends on the LGPL code. As an example, let's say we want to provide an SSH task for Ant (a recent question). There are a number of LGPL SSH java libraries around. The code in our respository would be developed under the ASF licence - it would consist of a Java class that merely drives the LGPL library. It will typically have import statements - something like:
import lgpl.sshlibrary.Thingy;
This code cannot be compiled without the LGPL library. Once compiled. however, it can be distributed without the library. To use the task code a user needs to supply the LGPL library independently.
So can the above code be stored in our repository? Can the compiled code be included in a binary distribution?
The import statement alone is sufficient to make the source code a work based on the Library, which means we could distribute under the terms of section 6. Those terms are viral and disallow binary-only releases, making our product viral because the Apache license does not require redistribution of source with executables.
In short, the answer is no, and this applies to any software with copyright of The Apache Software Foundation.
....Roy
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