GPL'd OSGi bundles

[David Lindelöf <da...@adhoco.com>]

Dear all,

I have a very general OSGi related question. What happens if someone
writes an OSGi bundle under the GPL licence and registers a service from
that bundle in the framework?

My understanding is that the framework cannot really be said to "link"
to the bundle and cannot be considered as forming a new program with it.
And other bundles that lookup this service cannot know in advance what
licence will be covering its providing bundle.

Is my understanding correct?

(I cannot use the LGPL, by the way. My work might include other GPL'd
code.)

Kind regards,
--
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David Lindelöf
Product Developer
Adhoco AG
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Re: GPL'd OSGi bundles

[Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk>]

David Lindelöf wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I have a very general OSGi related question. What happens if someone
> writes an OSGi bundle under the GPL licence and registers a service from
> that bundle in the framework?
> 
> My understanding is that the framework cannot really be said to "link"
> to the bundle and cannot be considered as forming a new program with it.
> And other bundles that lookup this service cannot know in advance what
> licence will be covering its providing bundle.
> 
> Is my understanding correct?
> 
> (I cannot use the LGPL, by the way. My work might include other GPL'd
> code.)

My gut says that running GPL code within Felix is okay, while the other 
way around may not be (much as running Gimp on Windows appears to be 
acceptable). However, seeing as I'm not a lawyer (or even close) you'd 
be much better emailing legal-discuss@apache.org.

Regards, Upayavira