License Change?

[alexander]

Is Alfresco now GPL?

[paulhh]

May be 🙂

Full details and explanations will be coming soon. 

Paul.

[jimisola]

May be 🙂

Full details and explanations will be coming soon. 

Paul.

I'm currently evaluation Alfresco, but the Community edition has some major drawback:

- patches (bug and security fixes) are not available according to comparison (http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/comparison/😞 I want an install that I don't have to upgrade every other day other than bug and security fixes every now and then
- read that security was missing from the open source version, but it seem to have changed. correct?

Assuming that the rumour of the license change to GPL is correct, how will it affect the above?

Regards,
Jimisola

[fselendic]

Don't you guys use some Apache licensed software? Can I kindly remind you that GPL an Apache don't mix well together ? At least that's what FSF lawyers are saying.

On the side note, I would really like to see you somehow get rid of "badgeware" license and go with any kind of OSI compatible license. So I hope that this rumoured changes will lead in that direction.

[paulhh]

Apparently, this is not considered an issue by Apache.  There is discussion on the topic on the Apache site.

Cheers
Paul.

[fselendic]

Apparently, this is not considered an issue by Apache.  There is discussion on the topic on the Apache site.

Cheers
Paul.

Yeah, I do know that is not considered an issue by Apache However it IS considered as an issue by FSF (just see their list of compatible licenses). I'm not a lawyer, just wanted to point out that there are some possible issues. For example, there IS a reason why Apache Harmony and GPLed (with linking exception) Classpath (and newly opensourced Sun JVM) do not share the same codebase.

As far as I can remember, some patent clause(s) was the problem in (again, possible, depends on who you ask) incompatibilities.

However, it is for you as copyright owners of the code, and (especially) your lawyers to decide, IF you will ever go with GPL. I just wanted to friendly warn about possible issues.

Ups, just find a site,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Apache is clearly considered as GPL incompatible:

"This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL. The Apache License is incompatible with the GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent termination cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)"

So, you have one set of lawyers (Apache) telling it is OK, and another set of lawyers (FSF) telling it isn't.

Good luck


Cheers.

[mjasay]

It's important to keep in mind that the GPL is arguably only incompatible with Apache 2.0.  (Yes, I know what the FSF says.  🙂  This is due to patents.  However, as there are no patents tied to any of the Apache 2.0 (or 1.0/1.1) code that Alfresco uses, this is a non-issue.  The Apache Foundation does not seek or hold patents on its code, nor have the other individuals/projects that Alfresco incorporates.

Even if this weren't the case, and the patent provisions conflicted in actuality, it would be easy enough for Alfresco to "pass through" the Apache license terms to our licensees.  In other words, we would GPL our product (if that were in fact our intention 🙂 and simply state that notwithstanding our use of the GPL, a few modules are subject to Apache licenses.  No problem.

If you have any questions on this, please feel free to ping me.  first.last@alfresco.com.

Matt

[tkaefer]

Hi!

I have two issues:

1. I'm wondering why there is no dual licensing of Alfresco under the MPL and GPL? => you get the best of both licenses…

2. Which license is used for the webservice classes provided by the Alfresco-Java-SDK?


Greets
Tobias

[derrickhackman]

The GPL is a huge drawback because I want to integrate Alfresco with an application that I am building and I want to modify the Alfresco UI to make it look seamless between the applications. With a GPL on the Alfresco code I cannot do this unless I make my code GPL.

Can someone clarify this issue. What are the options (if any) if you want a custom UI and thereby modify Alfresco to meet your needs?

[mjasay]

If you are trying to integrate our code with open source code, you're fine - our FLOSS Exception covers this.

If you're trying to integrate our code with proprietary code, you can enter into an OEM relationship with us (same as before when it was MPL + Attribution).

Either way, you should be fine.