On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 17:30 +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:
> crispyalien wrote:
> > Hi, I am new here but I already have a stupid question ... :) ...Wil
> > harmony use CLASPATH project or not?
>
> Almost certainly. Read the archives.
Hi, I am new here as well. I have noticed that there seems to be a
consensous that CLASSPATH is the way to go for the java(x).* classes.
CLASSPATH is licensed under GPL with a special exception allowing
linking to independent modules to produce an executable. Lets call this
GPL-. It sounds alot like LGPL but that is not what the website says.
How can Harmony use CLASSPATH if it will be licensed under the Apache
License? Three possible solutions come to mind:
1. Since it is GPL, Harmony could just depend on it.
2. Harmony forks it and leaves it as GPL+.
3. Harmony forks it and relicense it to Apache License.
Option 1 seems good but would not allow harmony to get changes specific
to it's goals. Option 2 has the same licensing problems as option 2 but
would allow harmony to make changes specific to it's goals. Also
Options 1 & 2 suffer from another stumbling block: some developers,
particularly corperate sponsored developers, might not want to
contribute to an LGPL'd product. Option 3 does not seem possible since
that would require all contributors to the CLASSPATH project to agree.
None of these solutions is optimal. Another option might be to start
with CLASSPATH as a base and develop a replacement library under the
Apache License, a project I would be happy to contribute to.
Thanks,
Dana H. P'Simer, Jr.
