Hi ASF folks,
I sort of recognize from the current debates about JCP that it may not be the perfect time to send such a request, but I'll dare it. This mail is sent to both XML and Jakarta general list as they are both involved, thanks to tell me if it is useless to send it to both. Recently, in our ActiveMath project we spent some time to prepare an appropriate license and, of course, we had to sort out all the third-party libraries we were using. As most of them are Apache or Mozilla licensed, there was no big deal. I quickly realized, however, that some others were coming in. SAX and DOM, to name a few. I scratched and found the license. Then a bit more... ah the servlet interface class-files. Woups, the download of them requires a big license: we had been happily using Tomcat 3.1 which was doing a clean job until I read it: you may deliver the software (servlet 2.1 class-files) with your product as long as the release date of your product is no later than 180 days than the release of the software covered by this license. (quoting non-verbatim) That is (we're way later than six months from the latest release of servlet 2.1), we could not distribute the product with our beloved Tomcat 3.1 and had to upgrade. This came as a surprise ! I then scratched more to download jaxp 1.1 (the 1.2 being still in early access) and... nowhere to be found ! Fortunately someone of us had a complete download with a license... This mail would like to request that all Apache distributions, wether from Jakarta or XML group, be distributed with all the licenses of accompanying software. I feel it is important so that the download is a real "pick-up-and-go". And it is especially important with Sun software (like Jaxp or servlet.jar) which have licenses which involve non-empty obligations. If it is not possible to include such licenses (e.g. because redistribution of the redistribution is not possible) it should also be clearly stated such and pointers to the download of the separate interface-class-files should be available. (I actually fear it is the case with the jaxp or servlet classes). Also, I'd prefer these classes to be packaged separately than put in the same java archive. I seem to understand, among others from the jaxp (official and inofficial) FAQ that the tendency goes along the lines of "the reference implementation (crimson and xalan in this case) contains the specifications' interfaces" (note, I'm not quoting verbatim). This would allow normal developers to apply decent versioning. And if this has anything in common with the current JCP debate then I would even insist: putting these licenses or pointers to downloads of them displays to the public the limitations that ASF has and allows to attract attention on the problem even more than not saying anything. Paul ================================================================= = Paul Libbrecht Java developer The ActiveMath project = = http://www.activemath.org/~paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] = ================================================================= -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
