What about LGPL? Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
Lawrence E. Rosen
lrosen at rosenlaw.com
Sun Mar 16 19:40:11 UTC 2003
The AFL has the same effect with the LGPL as it does with the GPL. I
contend it is also fully compatible. All are free licenses.
The issue has nothing to do with linking.
/Larry Rosen
> -----Original Message-----
> From: news [mailto:news at main.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Andrew C. Oliver
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 5:12 AM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: What about LGPL? Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
>
>
> 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.
>
> I asked if Eben Moglen's comments in slashdot on the subject were
> sufficient to lift the ban and Roy Fielding responded:
>
> "
> No. What the FSF needs to say is that inclusion of the
> external interface names (methods, filenames, imports, etc.)
> defined by an LGPL jar file, so that a non-LGPL jar can make
> calls to the LGPL jar's implementation, does not cause the
> including work to be derived from the LGPL work even though
> java uses late-binding by name (requiring that names be
> copied into the derived executable), and thus does not (in
> and of itself) cause the package as a whole to be restricted
> to distribution as (L)GPL or as open source per section 6 of
> the LGPL. "
>
> Most authors of Java software using the LGPL license intend to allow
> linking (basically the use of the java "import" of classes in
> their jar
> file). Who is right? Apache with their insistance that the LGPL is
> "viral" for Java software or the masses who think LGPLing their code
> causes modifiers to contribute but linking/use to be
> uninhibited even to
> proprietary software? (where the term "link" is not wholely
> appropriate
> for Java, I interperate it to mean including a jar in the
> classpath at
> compile-time and runtime and having import statement naming classes
> inside of a jar)
>
> 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. Secondly, I am considering releasing an upcoming
> Java codebase in LGPL or GPL, and while I understand the full
> ramifications of GPL, I do not feel I fully understand the
> ramifications
> of LGPL with regards to this issue.
>
> I would greatly appreciate if Mr. Stallman and Mr. Rosen
> could provide a
> definitive answer on this.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Andrew C. Oliver
>
>
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