Blogging Roller

Point out times when I was wrong....They're rare ;-) and far between :-)...sometimes it takes a little while to be proven right though. Actually its WORSE than that for you. Its either all GPL/LGPL or none. Think about it. If you depend on JSPWIKI and cannot run without it, you can't grant someone the right to NOT use the LGPL. It would just confuse the situation. The only thing you could do is have a situation which doesn't link those. There is a workaround so to speak. It's called JMX. JMX allows you to bind things without statically linking them. Meaning you can create a service called "wiki" and load that at runtime regardless of its actual content. You can then assume or identify its operations by name and run them. This could get around the license because you're actually loading a library in the C sense of the word link. The bitch is its a lot more difficult to code without compile-time checks (which is essentially what you're doing).

Posted by andy on July 16, 2003 at 09:38 AM EDT #

Do you recall when/where I posted a list of the LGPL components we were using?

Posted by Lance on July 16, 2003 at 09:51 AM EDT #

I think somebody needs to stop smoking crack. Sorry, but I'm a little bitter since I wasted the last hour trying to look into this. Here's what I found. Regarding "projects of the ASF are not allowed to link/distribute LGPL programs into Java projects of the foundation." All I could find was this (http://archives.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=community@apache.org&msgNo=1398), which says that because no one wanted to go to the trouble of making a decision about lgpl code, you can't use lgpl code in apache software. If you have a link to the apache website that is clearer, please let me know. Second, lets say using a .jar file in your application does cause you to be restricted by the LPGL license of that application, which it appears to. Did anyone actually read Section 6 of the LGPL? (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) It says: "As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications." You also have to "Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library." Yes, that's a .jar file. There are other minor stipulations in this section, but none of them include forcing software to use the lgpl license. Let me know if there are any flaws in what I've said here, but otherwise this is just another "The Sky is Falling" headline. PS Eeeerg. I can't get any linebreaks for this comment.

Posted by Paul Rivers on July 16, 2003 at 12:16 PM EDT #

For what it's worth, I posted some comments and questions at http://radio.weblogs.com/0122027/2003/07/16.html#a56.

Posted by Rod Waldhoff on July 16, 2003 at 12:42 PM EDT #

in response to paul rivers' comment on this item: hey, paul: "which says that because no one wanted to go to the trouble of making a decision about lgpl code, you can't use lgpl code in apache software." it doesn't say anything of the kind, and i more than slightly resent your claim that it does and the accompanying insinuation that we couldn't be bothered. it says "until we *do* know, we're playing it safe and not permitting anything that might get us in trouble later." better safe than sorry, particularly since the 'sorry' path could result in hurting a lot of projects. i respectfully request that you refrain from drawing conclusions from incomplete data about conversations to which you aren't even party.

Posted by Rodent of Unusual Size on July 16, 2003 at 12:57 PM EDT #

I hadn't intended to say anything about the Apache Software Foundation. It's a generally well respected group of people, which is the reason I made my point - Don't let me the mention of the Apache group fool you into thinking that they have taken the position that the LGPL is viral, because they haven't.

Posted by Paul Rivers on July 16, 2003 at 01:50 PM EDT #

To be more explicit about how to avoid propagating LGPL outside of its library, would this suffice? 1) write a Java interface, not GPL or LGPL, describing the typing and external behavior of the code. 2) write Java class files, LGPL'd, that implement that interface. 3) access the implementation, however it might be named (jar, classpath, URN, whatever) using Class.forName or its classloader equivalents, preferably with the name obtained in some configurable way so that the moral equivalent of a hard-coded reference is not present in the code (e.g., Class.forName("gnu.lgpled.Library")).

Posted by David Chase on July 18, 2003 at 02:16 PM EDT #