Hi Dan, >Sorry about the stale link. It was an interview with Stallman that said only >statically bound binary >libraries (machine code) need worry.
I looked into this a while ago (we were using gpl jars for one of our projects) and my conclusion was that it was not so clear cut: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OOPLang Interview with Eben Moglen from the Software Freedom Law Center (see question 2) http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/03/02/20/1544245.shtml?tid=117&tid=123 Though, indeed, in the end it will really only depend on what happens in court. Cheers, Dirk -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Davis [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 19 October 2010 18:11 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [fcrepo-dev] Fedora, 3rd party licences and commercial use Sorry about the stale link. It was an interview with Stallman that said only statically bound binary libraries (machine code) need worry. My understanding the few suits filed by FSF have been for that only. The nature of Java should be adequate protection for Java libraries and I don't see a problem asserting the Apache 2 license for Fedora so long a we are distributing pure Java libraries even if some are GPL especially for non-commercial users. I am more concerned about lawyer's perception (a very real concern) for inclusion of Fedora in commercial work which we want to permit rather than actually violating the GPL license. We want to get rid a Mckoi because it is OBE by Derby. But it will be interesting to find out if there is GPL code in the transitive dependencies. -- Dan Davis On 10/19/2010 12:40 PM, Daniel Davis wrote: I am not a lawyer but I would not necessarily interpret this to apply to Fedora. Since Fedora does not statically bind machine code libraries to Fedora it may not be incompatible with GPL. This is endlessly argued and I am sensitive to commercial lawyers being very careful. Their perceptions are important but due to transitive dependencies it may not be practical to get open-source code to do a function without crossing some GPL code. Read this article. FYI, significant to the open source community - here is an article that attempts to clarify misinterpretations about GPL: http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/12878 -- Dan Davis On 9/23/2010 12:25 PM, Chris Wilper wrote: Dirk, While updating the license page, I had a look at the source code and realized that we are in fact distributing the McKoi JDBC driver for people who want to integrate with an existing database. So I clarified the license page to indicate that it's the JDBC driver only, and it's optional. Interestingly, I also found that McKoi has switched to GPLv3, which, unlike GPLv2, is compatible with the Apache2 license: http://www.mckoi.com/License.html Regardless, I have created a request to drop McKoi support in future versions. See the url below for more detail/reasoning. https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/FCREPO-804 Thanks, Chris On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Chris Wilper <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: Hi Dirk, Thanks for pointing this out...this license page clearly needs to be reviewed for accuracy with the latest releases. Generally, we do not include GPL(2) libraries with Fedora due to license incompatibility. Most notably, McKoi is no longer included with Fedora -- we actually switched to Derby as the bundled pure java database option some time ago. I will get this corrected on the license page shortly. Fedora has been distributed under several open source licenses in the past, but we have finally settled on Apache 2 due to its widespread use (familiarity) and commercial friendliness. I don't anticipate this will change any time soon. Thanks, Chris On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:10 AM, Gorissen D. <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: Just a quick follow-up, Again, I am not a lawyer but from http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html it seems that the FSF considers Apache 2.0 and GPL 2 to be incompatible. Yet, for example, Mckoi (which Fedora uses) is licensed under the GPL 2.0 (http://www.mckoi.com/Mckoi%20SQL%20Database.html). The whole derivative works issue is very murky and I dislike this licensing business as much as the next coder but its just something I noticed. Cheers Dirk -----Original Message----- From: Gorissen D. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 21 September 2010 14:46 To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: [fcrepo-dev] Fedora, 3rd party licences and commercial use Hello, I have been evaluating the use of Fedora-commons for our project (which may eventually include a commercial angle). I am still very new to the Fedora project, so bear with me :) When going through the license information on http://www.fedora-commons.org/software/licenses I noticed that the list does not seem fully up to date. For example the websites of apache-batik, Jakarta-oro and apache-commons list the license as being Apache 2.0 vs Apache 1.1. Similar for Jersey. Also, as an aside, some of these 3rd party libraries seem to be no longer maintained (eg., Jakarta-oro) or superseded (McKoi vs Derby? JMX?). Finally, the "more info" links return a 403 error. However, I did not check which versions are actually included in the latest Fedora release but maybe it is worth checking if this page is still up to date. I did not manually check everything, but the list of licences I get are: Apache License 2.0, Apache License 1.1, LGPL 2.1, LGPL 2.0, MIT, public domain, dual CDDL 1.0 and GPL 2 with CPE, BSD, CDDL 1.0, CPL 1.0, GPL 2.0, OSL 3.0/Apache 2.0, MPL 1.0, Sun binary code I am still unsure what all this means from a compatibility/redistribution standpoint, but then again I am not a lawyer. It seems there are some commercial routes being explored with Fedora, I would be interested in any success stories, tips, or experience. If any (major) changes are pending with regard to license policy that would also be worth knowing (e.g., following the Duraspace initiative). Many thanks, Best regards, Dirk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nokia and AT&T present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps & games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Fedora-commons-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fedora-commons-developers -- Daniel W. Davis Cornell University, Computing and Information Science [email protected] (607) 216-4299 (Skype - Preferred) (607) 255-6090 (Office - Deprecated) DuraSpace Affiliate http://duraspace.org [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download new Adobe(R) Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 The new Adobe(R) Flex(R) 4 and Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 (formerly Flex(R) Builder(TM)) enable the development of rich applications that run across multiple browsers and platforms. Download your free trials today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Fedora-commons-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fedora-commons-developers
