Whomever creates such a component is responsible for releasing it under a 
license compatible with the licenses of the dependencies. I'd think that in 
such case the best option is either something like camel-extra (if GPL is ok) 
or an independent project at github, or hosted by some organization. 

The issue is not only if he can use a particular product under a license but 
also if downstream users could use it. For instance, organization X produces 
technology T under dual license, GPL+commercial. Person or organization Y 
produces work W dependent on techonology T and decides to donate it to 
camel-extra, licensed under GPL, all is good. User U uses T, but as it's many 
times the case uses it under the commercial license. U may not be able to use 
W, because nobody licenses camel-extra (nor could it) under a commercial 
license and GPL is viral. IANAL, but licensing (and IP) is tricky business.

My $0.02,
Hadrian


On Jul 21, 2011, at 6:20 PM, Richard Kettelerij wrote:

> Hi
> 
> As we all know Camel has many components [1] and as such depends on a large
> number of (third party) libraries. Occasionally community members are
> requesting new components or are willing to donate components they have
> developed themselves. Usually the question emerges where to host these new
> components. This is largely governed by the (third party) libraries used by
> the component and the licences of these libraries. The options are roughly:
> 
> 1) 3rd party library is open source under ASL compatible licence (ASL, BSD,
> MIT, etc): host at Apache.
> 2) 3rd party library is open source under non-ASL compatible licence (GPL,
> LGPL, AGPL, etc): host at Apache Extras / Camel Extras.
> 3) 3rd party library is open source and best maintained outside of Camel:
> host at 3rd party project (like Smooks, Activiti, Drools)
> 4) 3rd party library is not open source,
> it's proprietary / commercial software: ???????
> 
> What's your opinion in case of situation 4? Examples where this situation
> applies are [2] en [3].
> 
> Regards,
> Richard
> 
> [1] http://camel.apache.org/components.html
> [2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-4221
> [3]
> http://camel.465427.n5.nabble.com/Developing-Oracle-Coherence-3-7-Camel-Component-td4618649.html

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