[jira] [Closed] (LEGAL-162) May I use a ALv2 compatible licensed 3rd party library which depends upon and directly uses GPL2/GPL3 APIs?

["Henri Yandell (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-162?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Henri Yandell closed LEGAL-162.
-------------------------------
    Resolution: Fixed

This appears to me to be covered by this question on resolved.html:

https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#optional

> May I use a ALv2 compatible licensed 3rd party library which depends upon and directly uses GPL2/GPL3 APIs?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LEGAL-162
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-162
>             Project: Legal Discuss
>          Issue Type: Question
>            Reporter: Ate Douma
>
> The actual use-case concerns a possible contribution to Apache Shindig providing optional support for Neo4J (http://www.neo4j.org).
> Neo4J (API) libraries are distributed under the GPL3 license which of course cannot and will not be distributed by the ASF.
> The Neo4J support is intended to be fully optional, so Apache Shindig will not depend on this and the end-user will have to provide the required dependencies itself.
> The proposed contribution currently has a direct dependency on and usage of Neo4J APIs.
> This is already assumed not to be allowed as this causes the GPL3 license to become applicable to the whole of the (optional) Apache Shindig neo4j support module.
> However, a possible 'workaround' has been proposed by replacing the direct Neo4J API usages with a 3rd party ALv2 compatible licensed 'bridge' library: Spring Data Neo4j (http://www.springsource.org/spring-data/neo4j).
> This bridge is ALv2 licensed, however it also depends and uses Neo4J APIs directly, and is not provided by the Neo4J project itself.
> So while this bridge seems to 'hide' the direct GPL3 usage behind an ALv2 'facade', it seems to me this really is a 'fake' solution, still causing the GPL3 to be applicable, if indirectly.
> I like to get a clear confirmation or rejection of the above assumption, so we can proceed with possible accepting/rejecting the contribution as proposed.
> Thanks, Ate



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