[License-discuss] Proposal: Apache Third Party License Policy

[Richard Eckart de Castilho]

On 27.05.2015, at 20:17, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> If we amended the proposal to leave out the GPL licenses, would that calm your concerns?
>  
> I'd really hate to do that at Apache for that set of generous FOSS licenses, but fear is fear.... Apache didn't cause this fear of "infection" and Apache can't cure it. There is a group of attorneys that is drafting an appropriate "exception" that would allow at least some GPL software to be aggregated with Apache software.
>  
> But are ALL other OSI-approved licenses OK with you?

I'd personally not be inclined to make a blanket statement on all OSI-approved licenses - the list is quite longish.

For example, it is my understanding that the following clause from the LGPL also represents a reciprocal licensing term that we do not wish our downstream users to be affected by:

> 6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications.


Actually, I wonder how this licensing term goes along with the OSI rule "9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software".

Cheers,

-- Richard