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Posted to dev@ant.apache.org by Stuart Roebuck <st...@adolos.co.uk> on 2001/01/18 14:09:36 UTC
[Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
I've just had an email from Chris Seguin, the author of the code reformatting utilities. It looks to him that the GPL and Apache licenses are incompatible. He says:
> The apache license says that the code is owned by the
> Apache organization (and that it should remain open
> source). GPL seems incompatible with this. GPL says
> that the code is still owned by me.
Can someone clarify this so that I can give him some firm information - apologies if this has come up a thousand times before - I couldn't find a helpful reference in my archives.
I hasten to say that he goes on to say:
> I might just start releasing it with a Apache license
> instead.
>
> Also, I'm excited! I got Ant to work today!!!!
Stuart.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuart Roebuck stuart.roebuck@adolos.com
Lead Developer Java, XML, MacOS X, XP, etc.
ADOLOS http://www.adolos.com/
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Mark Wielaard <ma...@klomp.org>.
Hi,
On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 07:24:26AM +1100, Peter Donald wrote:
>
> yep 100%. GPL can not use APL and APL can not use GPL. I heard that this
> will change with APL1.3 and GPL3 but no one has been able to confirm or
> deny this ;)
This was hinted on by Brain Behlendorf last month on debian-legal
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0012/msg00088.html>:
> I'm working with Stallman now on modifying the Apache license in such a
> way to make it GPL compatible, since I believe fundamentally our
> philosophies are compatible. Ask most people who BSD or Apache license
> their code if they feel that GPL advocates should be able to use their
> code, most will say yes. If I get as far as a draft this'll be one place
> I float it.
I hope they can come to an agreement.
> >I hasten to say that he goes on to say:
> >
> >> I might just start releasing it with a Apache license
> >> instead.
> >>
> >> Also, I'm excited! I got Ant to work today!!!!
>
> You could ask him to dual license it (GPL/APL) or you could ask him to
> place it under BSD (which both APL and GPL can use).
It is important to note that (modern) BSD does not have the advertisment
and/or trademark clauses that the APL has which makes the APL incompatible
with the GPL. But a license without those clauses (APL 3, 5 and 6) is
completely compatible with both the APL and the GPL. An example can be
found <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html>. Such a license
should make both GPL and APL fanatics happy.
Cheers,
Mark
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>.
At 02:56 18/1/01 -0500, David Corbin wrote:
>I suspect that this has it's problems too. If he has incorporated other
>peoples code into it (and I think he has), he needs their permission (at
>least in an ethical sense, but probably legal to (IANAL)) to release it
>under another license..
Only if he integrated "significant" other work or accepted significant bug
fixes or feature enhancements such that the other party gained a copyright
claim on the work. What the definition of "significant" entails is for
lawyers to decide but a conservative estimate is either 10 lines of code or
5% of code of code per source file (which ever is greater).
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
*-----------------------------------------------------*
RE: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by "Preston L. Bannister" <pr...@home.com>.
From: Ceki Gulcu [mailto:cgu@urbanet.ch]
> The number of people who really understand open source licensing is
> probably fewer than the number of scholars who understand general
> relativity. Does it all boil down to two egos (RMS/ESR)? Ceki
One practical difference is that the GPL is coercive.
The GPL wants to *force* you to license the code you
write under the GPL if you use any GPL code ("copyleft").
This is very often a practical problem.
( Discussion on this topic can and has gone on at great length.
I don't really want to re-visit a 15 yead old issue :).
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Jon Stevens <jo...@latchkey.com>.
on 1/18/01 1:55 PM, "Ceki Gulcu" <cg...@urbanet.ch> wrote:
> Every time I hear that the APL (or any other permissive open source
> license) is not compatible with the GPL my hair stands. So RMS decided that
> the APL and the GPL are incompatible. No one seems to challenge that. Why
> are the GPL and APL incompatible? Really, why? The GNU site
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses)
> declares that the APL as incompatible saying the it has unacceptable
> requirements. I wonder which requirements they are referring to. Does
> anyone know?
Ask the FSF these questions. They are not really appropriate here as RMS
doesn't subscribe to this list (that I know of).
> The number of people who really understand open source licensing is
> probably fewer than the number of scholars who understand general
> relativity. Does it all boil down to two egos (RMS/ESR)? Ceki
I would say so.
-jon
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>.
At 10:55 18/1/01 +0100, Ceki Gulcu wrote:
>Every time I hear that the APL (or any other permissive open source
>license) is not compatible with the GPL my hair stands. So RMS decided that
>the APL and the GPL are incompatible. No one seems to challenge that. Why
>are the GPL and APL incompatible? Really, why? The GNU site
>(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses)
>declares that the APL as incompatible saying the it has unacceptable
>requirements. I wonder which requirements they are referring to. Does
>anyone know?
APL1.1 clause 5. (You may not use the name Apache, Ant or Jakarta in the
name of your product if you fork). However this clause would be covered by
common trademark law in US and most other western countries IFF the project
had been going for more than 6 months.
>The number of people who really understand open source licensing is
>probably fewer than the number of scholars who understand general
>relativity. Does it all boil down to two egos (RMS/ESR)? Ceki
While it is unfortunately ego-centric there are/were valid choices for
different licenses. RMS wants to take over the world - he started the FSF
as an act of terrorism on the proprietrary software market. Because he
applied terrorist tactics it is considered very hostile to other friendlier
licenses.
Compare this to MIT/BSD2 licenses (on which APL is based). They are less
terrorists and more working from within the system to change it. BSD based
code bases have had a much more fundamental effect on computing over years
- consider X windows, many of the unixes, the rise of TCP/IP as a standard,
probably the apache httpd etc can all be atributed to the freer licenses.
Before you say GPL is evil you have to consider the environment in which it
originated (1982 ???). The vendors never shared code and as such GPL was
the only option if you wanted to encourage rewriting.
Where BSD usually has fewer developers who are less religious and more
skilled, GPL generally attracts the other type (zealots who are less
skilled and younger and many of them) due to it's dogma which is very
compatable with young liberal minds ;) GPL also is usually more prone to
having benevolent dictators while BSD organises by committee more - I gues
spartially due to history reasons and partially due to
sub-culture/matureity of developers.
There are exceptions though - many GPL projects have great developers while
many BSD projects have sucky ones. I have also seen many newer GPL or LGPL
projects starting to work by committee.
>Freedom as in the capacity to exercise choice.
did you choose this signature specially for this mail ?
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
*-----------------------------------------------------*
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Ceki Gulcu <cg...@urbanet.ch>.
Every time I hear that the APL (or any other permissive open source
license) is not compatible with the GPL my hair stands. So RMS decided that
the APL and the GPL are incompatible. No one seems to challenge that. Why
are the GPL and APL incompatible? Really, why? The GNU site
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses)
declares that the APL as incompatible saying the it has unacceptable
requirements. I wonder which requirements they are referring to. Does
anyone know?
The number of people who really understand open source licensing is
probably fewer than the number of scholars who understand general
relativity. Does it all boil down to two egos (RMS/ESR)? Ceki
At 11:54 18.01.2001 -0800, you wrote:
>on 1/18/01 11:32 AM, "Steve Loughran" <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
>
> > Am I correct in my belief that were a java style ant task to be made part
> > of the Java style distribution, and not ant, there would be no issues?
>
>100%.
>
> > If that were the the case then the solution to the problem would be
> "add the
> > ant task to the style libraries" and be done with it. Same for some
> means of
> > invoking ant from within Jedit. (has anyone scripted that yet?)
>
>Yes. I agree...in fact, this brings up the issues of which tasks should be
>included with Ant and which shouldn't...If project == OSS, then I personally
>feel that tasks should belong closest with their projects...
>
>-jon
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe, e-mail: ant-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
>For additional commands, e-mail: ant-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
---
Freedom as in the capacity to exercise choice.
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Jon Stevens <jo...@latchkey.com>.
on 1/18/01 11:32 AM, "Steve Loughran" <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
> Am I correct in my belief that were a java style ant task to be made part
> of the Java style distribution, and not ant, there would be no issues?
100%.
> If that were the the case then the solution to the problem would be "add the
> ant task to the style libraries" and be done with it. Same for some means of
> invoking ant from within Jedit. (has anyone scripted that yet?)
Yes. I agree...in fact, this brings up the issues of which tasks should be
included with Ant and which shouldn't...If project == OSS, then I personally
feel that tasks should belong closest with their projects...
-jon
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Stevens" <jo...@latchkey.com>
To: <an...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 10:44
Subject: Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
> The short story is that the GPL license and the ASF license are
> incompatible according to the FSF (not the irony here is that the ASF has
> not made such claims). Therefore, you cannot under and circumstances link
> with (ie: use a .jar) or include GPL software within an ASF project.
Am I correct in my belief that were a java style ant task to be made part
of the Java style distribution, and not ant, there would be no issues?
If that were the the case then the solution to the problem would be "add the
ant task to the style libraries" and be done with it. Same for some means of
invoking ant from within Jedit. (has anyone scripted that yet?)
-steve
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Jon Stevens <jo...@latchkey.com>.
on 1/18/01 11:56 AM, "David Corbin" <dc...@machturtle.com> wrote:
> I suspect that this has it's problems too. If he has incorporated other
> peoples code into it (and I think he has), he needs their permission (at
> least in an ethical sense, but probably legal to (IANAL)) to release it
> under another license..
In his case this wasn't an issue because he was very careful with this and
thus he didn't have problems...he owned the code. However, I'm glad you
stated that because it is an important factor.
-jon
--
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by David Corbin <dc...@machturtle.com>.
Jon Stevens wrote:
>
> on 1/18/01 5:09 AM, "Stuart Roebuck" <st...@adolos.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > I've just had an email from Chris Seguin, the author of the code reformatting
> > utilities. It looks to him that the GPL and Apache licenses are incompatible.
> > He says:
> >
> >> The apache license says that the code is owned by the
> >> Apache organization (and that it should remain open
> >> source). GPL seems incompatible with this. GPL says
> >> that the code is still owned by me.
> >
> > Can someone clarify this so that I can give him some firm information -
> > apologies if this has come up a thousand times before - I couldn't find a
> > helpful reference in my archives.
> >
> > I hasten to say that he goes on to say:
> >
> >> I might just start releasing it with a Apache license
> >> instead.
> >>
> >> Also, I'm excited! I got Ant to work today!!!!
>
> Yes. The short story is that the GPL license and the ASF license are
> incompatible according to the FSF (not the irony here is that the ASF has
> not made such claims). Therefore, you cannot under and circumstances link
> with (ie: use a .jar) or include GPL software within an ASF project.
>
> Your best bet is to attempt to convince him to release a BSD or MPL 1.1
> version of his software. You can also suggest to him that he dual license
> his source code (like Justin Wells did with WebMacro) although that isn't
> preferable as it leads to confusion IMHO.
I suspect that this has it's problems too. If he has incorporated other
peoples code into it (and I think he has), he needs their permission (at
least in an ethical sense, but probably legal to (IANAL)) to release it
under another license..
>
> Lastly, I would like to just state my own personal opinion (again) which is
> that the GPL just plain sucks.
You have understated how much it sucks.
>
> thanks,
>
> -jon
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: ant-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: ant-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
--
David Corbin
Mach Turtle Technologies, Inc.
http://www.machturtle.com
dcorbin@machturtle.com
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Jon Stevens <jo...@latchkey.com>.
on 1/18/01 5:09 AM, "Stuart Roebuck" <st...@adolos.co.uk> wrote:
> I've just had an email from Chris Seguin, the author of the code reformatting
> utilities. It looks to him that the GPL and Apache licenses are incompatible.
> He says:
>
>> The apache license says that the code is owned by the
>> Apache organization (and that it should remain open
>> source). GPL seems incompatible with this. GPL says
>> that the code is still owned by me.
>
> Can someone clarify this so that I can give him some firm information -
> apologies if this has come up a thousand times before - I couldn't find a
> helpful reference in my archives.
>
> I hasten to say that he goes on to say:
>
>> I might just start releasing it with a Apache license
>> instead.
>>
>> Also, I'm excited! I got Ant to work today!!!!
Yes. The short story is that the GPL license and the ASF license are
incompatible according to the FSF (not the irony here is that the ASF has
not made such claims). Therefore, you cannot under and circumstances link
with (ie: use a .jar) or include GPL software within an ASF project.
Your best bet is to attempt to convince him to release a BSD or MPL 1.1
version of his software. You can also suggest to him that he dual license
his source code (like Justin Wells did with WebMacro) although that isn't
preferable as it leads to confusion IMHO.
Lastly, I would like to just state my own personal opinion (again) which is
that the GPL just plain sucks.
thanks,
-jon
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by James Duncan Davidson <du...@x180.net>.
On 1/18/01 12:24 PM, "Peter Donald" <do...@apache.org> wrote:
> yep 100%. GPL can not use APL and APL can not use GPL. I heard that this
> will change with APL1.3 and GPL3 but no one has been able to confirm or
> deny this ;)
*May* change. All the relevant people are still talking. I wouldn't hold my
breath if I were you.
--
James Duncan Davidson duncan@x180.net
!try; do()
Re: [Coding Standards] Apache licence and GPL compatible?
Posted by Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>.
At 01:09 18/1/01 +0000, Stuart Roebuck wrote:
>I've just had an email from Chris Seguin, the author of the code
reformatting
utilities. It looks to him that the GPL and Apache licenses are
incompatible.
yep 100%. GPL can not use APL and APL can not use GPL. I heard that this
will change with APL1.3 and GPL3 but no one has been able to confirm or
deny this ;)
>I hasten to say that he goes on to say:
>
>> I might just start releasing it with a Apache license
>> instead.
>>
>> Also, I'm excited! I got Ant to work today!!!!
You could ask him to dual license it (GPL/APL) or you could ask him to
place it under BSD (which both APL and GPL can use).
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
*-----------------------------------------------------*