2 Replies Latest reply on Mar 24, 2010 3:11 AM by swarup01

    LGPL & Apache License Conflict

    swarup01 Mar 23, 2010 5:16 AM

      JBoss App Server which is licensed under LGPL2.1 uses apache server (apache license) which is sitting inside it.

       

      We have got to know from legal department that we can't use LGPL 2.1 & Apache License together in a single application except it interacts with each other over a non - proprietary protocol (e.g. http) or data files (e.g. flat file,db, xml).

       

      We would like to know how this has been made possible in Jboss? what is the work around for this? Is jboss component interacts with apache over http only?

        • 1. Re: LGPL & Apache License Conflict
          peterj
          peterj Mar 23, 2010 12:03 PM (in response to swarup01)

          I would be very interested in hearing why your legal department has decreed this. From my reading, the Apache license is an "attribution license" - as long as you acknowledge that you are using their code, you have fulfilled the requirements. So I fail to see why a LGPL-licenced product cannot contain an Apache-licensed component. (I can see, however, that it would not work the other way around.)

           

          By the way, Tomcat (or JBoss Web Server) is not your biggest problem - JBoss AS also makes use of various other Apache components, such as commons logging.

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          • 2. Re: LGPL & Apache License Conflict
            swarup01 Mar 24, 2010 3:11 AM (in response to peterj)

            I mis-spoke in my original email -- he's not actually a lawyer.  Anyway this is his reply:

             

            Oops; looks like I did not make enough of a distinction between the LGPL and the GPL!

             

            The following para from http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html actually helps to make this distinction clearer:  This licensing incompatibility applies *only* when some Apache project software becomes a derivative work of some GPLv3 software, because then [rest snipped].

             

            Since the *LGPL* does not cause anything else to become a derived work, I see that they are compatible.  Thank Peter Johnson for correcting me, please!

             

            Sitaram Chamarty
            sitaram.chamarty@tcs.com

             

            /me wonders why the fsf web pages only talk of "GPL-compatibility", and don't mention "LGPL-compatibility" anywhere at all... :-)

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