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Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 20:36:39 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Ralph Goers (JIRA)" <jira@apache.org>
To: legal-discuss@apache.org
Message-ID: <JIRA.12728953.1406058434774.23353.1406061399740@arcas>
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Subject: [jira] [Commented] (LEGAL-207) May Apache projects have
 dependencies with prohibited licenses in test code?
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    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-207?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=14070848#comment-14070848 ] 

Ralph Goers commented on LEGAL-207:
-----------------------------------

My opinion on this is that the goal of the licensing policy is to make it clear what licensing issues end users of our software are going to face when they are using the software we create. It is not a guarantee that they won't need libraries with unapproved licenses to build or test the project.

So I would ask the question:
"If the dependency is not present at run time will the application continue to function properly?".  If leaving the dependency out causes no issues then I would argue that it is an optional dependency that has no impact on downstream users and would be OK. In fact, under these circumstances the dependency it is not really optional as it isn't even needed as a runtime dependency. Instead it is a build time dependency and is not any different than other tools used to build the project.  For example, cobertura is approved to perform code analysis of the code and is approved. Running the full build with this would require downloading cobertura to the user's system in the same manner as running tests would.

> May Apache projects have dependencies with prohibited licenses in test code?
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LEGAL-207
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-207
>             Project: Legal Discuss
>          Issue Type: Question
>            Reporter: Steve Rowe
>
> Spinoff from LEGAL-206.
> Are ASF projects allowed to distribute test source code that will not compile without a 3rd party dependency that has a prohibited license?
> For example, Java test code that includes lines of the form:
> {code:java}
> import com.example.Myclass;
> ...
> Myclass clazz = new Myclass();
> {code}
> where the definition of {{com.example.Myclass}} is included in a 3rd party dependency that has a prohibited license.
> While most products are unlikely to include compiled test source code with convenience binaries (though some projects do, including Apache Lucene's "Lucene Core" and Solr products), the ASF distributes source, so non-inclusion in binary distributions should not affect the answer here. 
> This question is not directly addressed anywhere that I can find.


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