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

[Rod Dixon]

I realize that this question was specifically addressed to Larry and RMS,
but please permit me to press my point once more since I am beginning to
recognize that despite the reputation of lawyers for over-complicating
matters, computer scientists seem to suffer from the same affliction. The
final question the poster posed about his project is entirely unrelated to
the initial quoted concern whether "the AFL is incompatible with the GPL?"
It might be easier to address these matters if the dynamic/static linking
questions and the LGPL are left independent from the generalized concern
about the AFL and GPL. Most importantly, in my opinion, the resolution of
what it means to say that one license is "incompatible" with another
should not be construed as resolving any specific legal question about a
particular project. You are quite likely to make wrong conclusions by
performing that type of mental gymnastics, if you are not a lawyer. For
example, although Andrew limited his question to a matter of interpreting
a couple of software licenses, the fact is his question implicitly
requires an application of copyright law as well; hence, any posted answer
merely addressing the LGPL is incomplete and one would be foolish to
follow. I provide this precaution in order to constructively pose how one
should read our discussions, which tend toward both
over-complicated queries and oversimiplied answers, but not necessarily in
that order.

-Rod


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.
>
> 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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>

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