Optimal license for Java projects ...

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 13:01, Chris Gray wrote:
>
> Have you looked at the Classpath licence? <http://www.classpath.org>

Some historical context. The Classpath libraries were under the LGPL
previously. The current license is GPL with a special exception which
allows static linking in some cases. This makes the copyleft rather
weak. It was a compromise to get more contributions to the code.
(Especially from some hackers at Cygnus that worked with embedded
devices. On embedded devices it is not always easy to "use a suitable
shared library mechanism for linking with the Library" as the LGPL
describes. GNU Classpath is now used with gcj, the GNU Compiler for
Java, to produce staticly [or shared] linked native code from java
sources for some embedded devices.)

I am not sure this special purpose license, as used for the core
libraries, is a good choice in other situations when you can use normal
GPL or LGPL copyleft.

In the past people often didn't use the GPL for their projects written
in the java language since there were no free compilers, libraries and
VMs to distribute them with. But we now have (multiple) java (like)
environments which are distributed under the GPL (or GPL compatible
terms). So using the GPL for such programs is now a good option.

Cheers,

Mark (GNU Classpath hacker)

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