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

[Andrew C. Oliver]

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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