Henri Yandell wrote:
>
> The reasoning is wrong. After discussion with the FSF, the ASF were
> happy that depending on LGPL jars did not invoke any form of
> reciprocalness, so there was no license issue to stop us using LGPL
> code and/or distributing it.
What reasoning was that?
The ASF distributes ASF licensed code, or code combined with code who's
terms are less restrictive than the ASF license.
In the few places that is simply not possible, or where several possible
options exist for the user, some of our configure programs allow our code
to link against more restrictively licensed code. But such code never
occurs in our tarballs. If is does, -that- is an issue.
> Policy comes into effect in terms of what we think our users expect.
> Do they expect to download something from us and have a GPL jar
> sitting in there? Definitely not. I imagine there would be an uproar
> if someone discovered that their assumption that something was Apache
> licensed was that hugely incorrect. Take a look at the HTTP Server
> license btw. Our flagship product is not licensed under AL 2.0, but is
> a combination of licenses, so this is an iceberg that people don't
> usually see the depths of.
And which code in httpd (/apr) is more restrictive than the ASL?
> We know that people aren't going to throw a hissy fit if they discover
> that the product they downloaded from us also contains MIT, BSD, ASL
> 1.1 or other AL 2.0 licences. Least it's a fair bet. What's tricky is
> to decide what they'll think when they discover
... that the code's effective license is more restrictive than the ASL.
There's no other yardstick.
> So the reason is not because of relicensing but because of what a user
> would expect of us. Relicensing is a copyright issue afaik - if you
> have the copyright you can relicense, if you don't you can't; in our
> case we have a software grant that defines a superclass of licence
> within which we can relicense.
No - you entirely confused me, and I thought I finally got a handle on
this. If the author, Andrus, wants to license their library under the
user's choice of ASL or LGPL they may do so. The user who chooses the
ASL terms is subject to purely the ASL, the user who choose the LGPL
terms is bound solely to those terms.
As a practical matter, they could add or remove terms to have an almost-
ASL, while they can only grant exceptions, and not impose new terms and
still be LGPL.
One thing Hen was dead on about - if YOU have the copyright. You must
be the copyright owner to grant a new license that the copyright holder
didn't initially grant.
Bill
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