On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:43:29AM -0500, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: > Anthony Green wrote: > >On Mon, 2005-11-28 at 07:16 -0800, Leo Simons wrote: > >>I didn't take notes but one of the many things I took away from this is > >>that it might > >>be a real good idea to try and see if classpath can be LGPLed; Mark > >>seemed to think > >>that is not an unattainable goal. When I get my hands on some spare time > >>(I hope it'll > >>be under the christmas tree) I hope to push forward om some of that. > > > >I don't understand this. The GNU Classpath license was designed to be > >even more liberal than the LGPL. What makes relicensing GNU Classpath > >to LGPL a good idea? > > If the ASF and the FSF find an agreement on linking to and/or bundling > LGPL material in an apache licensed distribution (and this finally seems > likely to happen), then we would have the first ever licensing bridge > between the two worlds.
Which will be awesome, really. > > Unfortunately, this bridge won't work for the GPL + exception, as it > would need to be reconsidered and knowing how careful both sides are in > terms of 'polluting their principles', I can tell you right now it might > well take forever and a half. Granted, the existence of the LGPL bridge > would help mitigate the fears of the most radical on both sides (yes, > they exist), but it will take some time nevertheless. > Sure. Otoh, I don't think GPL+linking exception should be that hard to come to terms with, considering that any binary of Apache Harmony I create on my OS X box from the C code of JCHVM/bootstrap JVM will have to include code licensed under GPL+linking exception (crt2.o and friends). See http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/compiler/ for details. And since we ultimately want to ship binaries for people to play with (releasing early, often and so on), eventually the board will have to come to a decision regarding GPL+linking exception licenses and figure out if they are fair enough for us to depend on in the Harmony binaries we ship. But we can surely defer that until we start shipping OS X and Linux binaries :) > If (and I say *IF*, I'm not suggesting anything to anybody) GNU > Classpath was to relicense or even simply dual license itself as LGPL, > it would make it possible to *automatically* have Harmony use that > licensing bridge without further legal issues. Yup. I think dual licensing with the LGPL should be sufficient for that to happen, and get us rolling forward in that aspect as well. > full disclosure: I am *perfectly* aware of how bizarre all this sounds. > Yet, building bridges is a long, painful and destabilizing process, > especially for those who like to live in islands and feel, naively, that > isolation is another word for purity. And yes, I'm pointing fingers to > the ASF first. Politics are complicated in any organisation ... and people tend to stick with what they are familar with. People are people everywhere. I think this is one of the projects where the sheer size of the undertaking, and the potential respective benefits of cooperation make an insular approach seem less attractive than collaborating, and bridge building. > Sometimes, it's easier to rewrite some code than to convince people to > relicense. > > Sometimes, it's easier to relicense some code than to convince people > that mixing two licenses is: a) legal and b) useful for their ultimate goal. > > Sometimes, it's easier to tell everybody to f**k off and spend your life > with your family/girlfriends/friends instead. > > At times, my life feels like a quantum superimposition of the above > three states ;-) > If in doubt, I'd chose spending my time with my girlfriend over license wrangling, as software licenses are so damn boring, whereas my girlfriend is just wonderful. One has to have his priorities in life ... :) cheers, dalibor topic
