Aaron Mulder wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Ole Husgaard wrote:
> > ...
> > No, it falls under "mere aggregation on a distribution medium".
> > One (IMO) important requirement for qualifying for "distribution
> > medium" is that a copy must be taken off the medium before being
> > usable. If the Internet is the distribution medium, a copy must
> > be downloaded to a local computer. If the distribution medium is
> > a zipfile, the zipfile must be unzipped first.
>
> No one is arguing that we do not distribute jBoss using "a
> distribution medium". After all, I could read the code to you and the air
> would probably be considered to be a distribution medium.
The point I am trying to make here is that somebody could read the
Tomcat code to me and use the _same_ air as a distribution medium
without creating a license conflict.
If jBoss and Tomcat are seperate and independent systems,
aggregating these _is_ "mere aggregation". This is not _just_
the case when aggregation is on a disk like R� thought, but
also when the aggregation is on a distribution medium (like air,
the Internet or a zipfile).
The legal problem with aggregation is that it is very hard
to limit, and without excluding it from the GPL, the GPL
would be in conflict with almost anything.
Example: Linux is an aggregate of the world, and so is
Solaris. If GPL didn't exclude aggregation, it would say
that Solaris must be GPL.
> The argument is
> that when the same source file imports both org.jboss.XXX and
> org.apache.XXX, or when jBoss distributes Tomcat interceptors, then this
> does not qualify as "mere aggregation", though it is certainly still
> distributed via some medium.
Correct. If a file under GPL imports org.apache.*, the
GPL requires that the Apache code be under GPL which is
a conflict with the Apache license. Same problem if some
Apache code imports org.jboss.*.
The problem we have here is that we do imports from Tomcat
and that creates a license conflict, as the Tomcat license
is not GPL-compatible.
The question I would like answered is: Do we have to import
from Tomcat?
This question is raised due to the license problems, but I
think it is valid from a technical viewpoint too:
- Do we really want to create this dependency ?
- Wouldn't it be better to have a generic way of
interoperating with a web application server ?
- Shouldn't we allow users to configure which web
application they want to use without having to hack
the jBoss code ?
For example: JDBC drivers. We have no dependencies on
any particular JDBC driver. Instead we have a generic
way of interoperating with them, and we allow the users
the freedom to set up the configuration files to use
the JDBC drivers they want. Result: No conflicts between
GPL and the licenses of the JDBC drivers.
Best Regards,
Ole Husgaard.
