What about LGPL? Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Andrew C. Oliver wrote:
> Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
> > Richard,
> >
> > Today you finally gave public reasons for your assertion that the AFL is
> > incompatible with the GPL.  Because you are simply wrong on the law and
> > wrong-headed on a matter of principle, I must file this public response.
>
> So I think I understand the controvery regarding GPL and why GPL and ASL
> (aka AFL) don't work together.  What about LGPL and ASL in the situation
> of Java?  Apache has a long standing ban on LGPL being used in Java
> projects and I want to know if its justified.

Just to keep everyone clear, the "AFL" in this week's discussion is the
Academic Free License:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/academic.php

it is NOT the Apache License.

The Apache license as it currently stands is not compatible with the GPL,
we recognize this; whether it's compatible with the LGPL depends on what
one's definition is of interfaces and derivative works.  We're looking at
a second rev of the Apache license that will be GPL compatible (and thus
also LGPL compatible).  No promises.

> On a personal note, clearing this up would help me greatly as I would
> like to use Trove4J (http://trove4j.sourceforge.net/) in the Apache
> project I founded (http://jakarta.apache.org/poi) instead of our own
> collection classes.

Since it's the Trove4J folks who would have standing in any case involving
LGPL-nonconformance, *not* the FSF, it really only matters how the Trove4J
folks intend the LGPL's language around derivative works and interfaces to
be interpreted.  If the Trove4J developers gave you a statement to the
effect that they do not intend for applications that use the Trove4J
interfaces to be considered derivative works, then your problem is solved,
and you don't need to wait for RMS or Eben.  If instead they want some
sort of "canonical" interpretation from the authors of the GPL, then all
of us have to wait, no matter what opinions are aired on license-discuss.

	Brian
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