New Apache licenses under consideration [LWN.net]

The Apache Software Foundation is developing a new set of licenses intended to cover software produced by Apache projects. There are three new licenses: the Apache License 2.0 would apply to most software, but the Apache RI License and the Apache TCK license deal with the extra constraints that come with Java-based projects. There are some concerns in some quarters that the licenses are not 100% free, due to some of the patent language and the Java restrictions. To your editor, however, they appear to be free licenses, given the fact that some Java software simply cannot be free. Interested people are encouraged to read the licenses and make comments - after having perused the mailing list archives.

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New Apache licenses under consideration

Posted Nov 10, 2003 22:20 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

To your editor, however, they appear to be free licenses, given the fact that some Java software simply cannot be free.

O, come on now. Giving up a little control and accepting a little non-freeness in our licenses is ok because we cannot call it java anyway?

The free software community has been working on alternatives for the proprietary java platform from Sun. They don't call it java, they call it kaffe, gcj or ikvm.net. They try to provide people an option to migrate away from the proprietary java platform, so they can build really free applications. And they have been quite successful. Recently Eclipse got combined with the above runtime-environments to create a really stunning Gnome/Glade development environment!

The Apache people have been really brave for trying to work with Sun and trying to convince them to open-up a little. It would be great if the Apache people could come up with a free GPL-compatible license that can be used by everyone. Be it Sun and their reference java implementation and/or the free platforms that we are working on. If the current licenses don't provide that yet then we should help them make these licenses completely free, so the work of the Apache people benefits the whole community, not just Sun.

New Apache licenses under consideration

Posted Nov 10, 2003 23:34 UTC (Mon) by kimoto (subscriber, #5244) [Link]

Also peruse the debian-legal archives starting around the message giving the text of these new proposals. (Summary: so far no one has argued that they are DFSG-free.)

New Apache licenses under consideration

Posted Nov 11, 2003 3:33 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (2 responses)

The idea of these licenses is really that it doesn't make sense to have a
reference implementation that everyone can change (and continue to call
the reference implementation), or a compatibility test that people can
just change. These things are essentially appendices to standards
documents, and, as such, are not exactly software in the sense of the GPL
preamble.

It seems to me that if RFCs and the GPL are immutable, there is no reason
that a reference implementation of an RFC (or of something standardized
in a different way), or a test for compatibility with a standard should
not be immutable in its identity as a RI or TCK.

Things get murky when licensing software whose main purpose, unlike that
of most software, is not to accomplish a task but, for example, to embody
a specification (or any number of other possible purposes, such as
telling a story or entertaining the user). It is for software with the
usual purpose that the ability to modify and rebuild the source and to
share your changes is useful.

New Apache licenses under consideration

Posted Nov 11, 2003 10:40 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

The FHS is a standard and the FHS document is free:
<<
Copyright (C) 1994-2000 Daniel Quinlan

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
standard provided the copyright and this permission notice are preserved
on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
standard under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that
the title page is labeled as modified including a reference to the
original standard, provided that information on retrieving the original
standard is included, and provided that the entire resulting derived
work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to
this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
standard into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the copyright holder.

This shows there is no reason a standard document or a reference implementation not to be free software. The license need just to allow modified versions provided they do not pretend to be the standard document or the reference implementation.

New Apache licenses under consideration

Posted Nov 11, 2003 12:26 UTC (Tue) by Carl (guest, #824) [Link]

Precisely. There is also the W3C way of publishing a spec and the software under different licenses, which makes sure that the W3C software releases are free software. Or the IETF RFC way to only declare something a standard when there have been at least two independent and interoperable implementations from different code bases developed.

It looks like the Apache people got close to something almost-free. It will probably be a good idea to not mix the software license with the conformance/certification mark license. If they split those things in two then you have the best of both worlds. Free software implementations and a clear process to being able to get a standards certification for a particular product/version. Hope they do get it right in the end. It would be nice if the GNU Classpath project could incorporate new Apache developed "java standards" in the future.