On 2025/12/02 18:32:31 James Dailey wrote:
Update - we need to stay on the older version for now.
The FSL license is highly problematic apparently. And likely is
categorized by ASF (Apache Software Foundation) as category X, which are
NOT allowed in a release.
Thanks all for paying attention to licensing! The FSL is definitely
Category X; Legal Affairs has now updated the website to add it:
https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-x
The rat tool should have detected this when the PR came in to upgrade to
v5.
I wonder if Rat simply hasn't been updated yet, since this only showed
up as written policy recently. (although it's always been clear that
FSL, like BSL, would never be OK in releases)
In any case, sounds like elsethread the project is switching to using
the previously Apache licensed version of this software, which is also a
great solution.
Thanks,
- Shane
Next up will be how to replace or effectively fork that code, or more
likely(?) make it optional.
If we can make Liquibase an “optional include”, then it can move to a
different concept. That was my original thought when I said, “not an
issue”. When we started using liquibase, my understanding was that it
wasn’t strictly required in the release.
On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 1:27 AM PJ Fanning <[email protected]> wrote:
> FSL is not allowed. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-661
>
> Forking Liquibase is a lot of work. So could you consider FOSS
> alternatives like Flyway?
>
>
> On 2025/12/02 08:40:37 Jarek Potiuk wrote:
> > There is also much more detailed discussion in
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-619 that covers the case
> where Lightbend wanted to give ASF "usage grant without limits" - which did
> not change the ASF "hard no" position.
> >
> > On 2025/12/02 08:32:08 Jarek Potiuk wrote:
> > > Hello dear Fineract friends.
> > >
> > > I saw that https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-721 has been
> opened regarding this discussion in Liquibase to FSL - and since I've been
> following earlier similar discussion I am almost certain that using
> Liquibase (if it is a mandatory dependency of Fineract) is going a hard
> "no".
> > >
> > > This is a very similar case like the earlier Akka licence change to
> BSL. I am copying here what I wrote in LEGAL-721. I am not a lawyer and not
> a legal committe member, so I guess you need to wait for Roman or someone
> from the legal commitee to confirm this but i am very convinced the answer
> will be "no" (unless Liquibase is an optional dependency for Fineract,
> which I highly doubt - looking what Liquibase is).
> > >
> > > However I strongly advince to hold on with releasing Fineract untill
> the issue is resolved and at the very least until official answer from
> Legal comes.
> > >
> > > Here is my comment in LEGAL-721
> > >
> > > This has been discussed and "hard no" from Roman Shaposhnik was given
> [2].
> > >
> > > [1] Change og licence of Akka to BSL:
> https://akka.io/blog/why-we-are-changing-the-license-for-akka
> > >
> > > [2] Akka BSL Licence change discussion -
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-620
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The only exception I think is if the software in question is optional
> feature - then X-Rated licences are possible. The main reaason why we do
> not allow such software is that when we have a mandatory dependency, we
> basically force our users to abide to the licence which might limit them
> not us. So while Fineract is not afffected, the users of Fineract might be
> and that limits the use of ASF software, which is not something ASF allows
> > >
> > > I guess the options are:
> > >
> > > a) stay as long as possible on ALv2 licenced version of Liguibase
> > > b) find a replacement
> > > c) vendor it in Fineract and keep fixing/patching issues on your own
> > > d) fork Liquibase (or maybe someone already did) and incubate it as
> Pekko did (but this a hard path and needs people who will create a PMC)
> > >
> > > J.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 2025/11/09 03:41:24 VICTOR MANUEL ROMERO RODRIGUEZ wrote:
> > > > James,
> > > >
> > > > Thank you for the notification.
> > > >
> > > > Regards
> > > >
> > > > Victor
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > El mié, 5 nov 2025 a las 9:58, James Dailey (<[email protected]>)
> escribió:
> > > >
> > > > > Small news:
> > > > > The liquibase license is changing to Functional Source License
> (FSL)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> https://www.liquibase.com/blog/liquibase-community-for-the-future-fsl
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't believe this has any impact on us, as we are not offering a
> > > > > commercial version of Liquibase itself but rather our users would
> have it
> > > > > in their Production environments, which is still not a problem.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
--
- Shane
Member
The Apache Software Foundation
