2 Replies Latest reply on Nov 23, 2012 3:22 AM by part-time

    License ambiguity to hopefully clear up.

    part-time

      Dear all,

       

      first post, but I have a question about the license it may be used under.

       

      from Chiba Shigeru's home page:

      http://www.csg.ci.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~chiba/javassist/

      we have a triple license terms available, MPL, Apache v2 AND LGPL

       

      but from the sourceforge page it is declared as LGPL only.

       

      And from this page whare all contributors sign up to help the project

      https://cla.jboss.org/contributions/view_cla.seam;jsessionid=2C60FEE790C762F3A9823869D0EE1C2B?type=i&cid=844

      if you select javassist then the person signing up is agreeing to LGPL only.

       

      This is giving me some problems with the lawyaer at my employer.

       

      I appreciate that contributors from before it became a JBoss project had signed up for MPL, but any new contributor may or may not agree to the MPL terms offered at some future date.

       

      can any of the project leads give me any information that might make the lawyers relax about this ambiguity?

       

      Regards,

       

      Mike

        • 1. Re: License ambiguity to hopefully clear up.
          chiba

          That's a kind of historical confusion.  Javassist is currently distributed under triple licenses MPL, Apache v2,

          and/or LGPL.

           

          Javassist was originally being distributed under MPL and then, when it was merged into JBoss, LGPL was

          added.  The interpretation between Marc (the founder of JBoss) and me was that, if someone redistributes

          Javassist as a part of JBoss AS from JBoss, it is subject to LGPL.  If Javassist is separately (or as a part

          of third-party products) distributed, the distributor can choose either MPL, LGPL, or (now you can also choose)

          Apache v2.  (S)he can also choose any combination of the three such as MPL+Apache and MPL+LGPL.

          According to the definition, JBoss (now redhat) choosed LGPL-only for distributing Javassist as a part of

          JBoss AS etc.

           

          Javassist is now also availalbe from Maven central.  It would be much more preferable to your lawyers.

           

          Another comment to your lawyers is that, when we added Apache v2 to the available license, all the

          contributors agreed to that.  (Unfortunately, the number of the contributors is small enough to easily make

          the agreement.)  So all of them agreed (by email basis) to the triple licensing.

           

          Mike, is this clear?

          • 2. Re: License ambiguity to hopefully clear up.
            part-time

            Hi Shigeru Chiba,

             

            Yes, that is very clear, and I am happy to pass that on to the lawyers for their files.

             

            Regards,

             

            mike