[Biojava-l] Apache License vs. (L)GPL

[Ross Gibb]

Now you're into the murky realm of software licensing.  The best advice 
is to ask a  lawyer who understands this stuff.  I am NOT a lawyer, so 
if you listen to what I say you do so at your own risk.  I guess the 
first question is what do you want to do with the code?  If you are 
writing an in house application, or something you are not going to 
distribute, you can do what you want with the code.  The GNU license in 
particular gives you freedom as in free speech.  Meaning, you can do 
whatever you want with it as long as you don't distribute it.  As soon 
as you distribute it then there are certain conditions under the GPL 
that you have to adhere to.

Now for the case where you want to distribute it.  This is my opinion, 
do with it what you like.  Of the GPL, LGPL and the Apache license, the 
GPL is the most restrictive so that's the one you are going to be 
restricted by.  Obviously anything you distribute is going to have to be 
open source.  I am going to assume that you are just using the software 
that you mentioned and have not changed any of it.  In a text file I 
would state what pieces are covered under what license.  For example, 
list the jar files and what license they are covered by and include the 
text of the license(s).  Now the tricky part, what kind of license does 
your project get as a whole?  I would say the GPL.  The Apache license 
is very flexible, much more so than the GPL, and the Apache site 
believes they are compatible with the GPL, so I think it is safe to 
place the project as a whole under the GPL.  You are not changing the 
Apache license because someone could look at your documentation see what 
piece of Apache you used and go and download it independently from Apache.

The real answer is that none of these licenses have been throughly 
tested in court (precedence) and it really depends on what you want to 
do with it.  Therefore, any advice you get is going to be at some level 
speculation.  Your best bet is to follow what other reputable software 
is doing.

Ross

Martin Szugat wrote:

>Hi!
>
>I'm using BioJava with my BioWeka project (www.bioweka.org). I'd like to
>create a distribution with BioWeka (GPL), BioJava (LGPL) and the Apache
>Commons libraries (Apache license) which are required by BioJava. However
>there seems to be an incompatibility between the GPL/LGPL and the Apache
>license:
>
>http://apache.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/18/215242&tid=117&tid=185&ti
>d=17&tid=2
>
>But the Apache foundation says the licenses are compatible: 
>
>http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#GPL
>
>So I'm a little bit confused if I'm allowed to package all libraries in the
>same distribution. Maybe someone can clarify that. I already contacted the
>Apache foundation but didn't get an answer, yet.
>
>Best regards
>
>Martin
>
>
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