GWT Violates LGPL

[allan]

LGPL/GPL have the obligation to provide source with any binary
distributions. Source can be provided directly with the binaries or in
an offer, made available to the public for 3 years.

You cannot fulfill the obligation by pointing to a 3rd party download
site for the source. Go ask Cisco and others who have had to comply
with this requirement.

GWT/Google provides neither an offer or the source.

Not only is Google in violation but I, or any one redistributing GWT,
will be violating LGPL as well. I will have to separately provide the
source any time I distribute GWT.

GWT package should include the source code for any LGPL components.

How does one get Google GWT project managers to be aware of this issue?

[TheB...@gmail.com]

Last time i checked the source code is with the binary. everything is
in the jar files.

[Daniel Berlin]

On Apr 6, 4:27 pm, allan <allan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> LGPL/GPL have the obligation to provide source with any binary
> distributions. Source can be provided directly with the binaries or in
> an offer, made available to the public for 3 years.

No, this is true of works using the GPL, but not of works using the
LGPL.

>
> You cannot fulfill the obligation by pointing to a 3rd party download
> site for the source.  Go ask Cisco and others who have had to comply
> with this requirement.

The LGPL does not require source, it is only one of a myriad of
options to comply with it.

>
> GWT/Google provides neither an offer or the source.

As they don't have to

>
> Not only is Google in violation but I, or any one redistributing GWT,
> will be violating LGPL as well.  I will have to separately provide the
> source any time I distribute GWT.

No, you aren't.

>
> GWT package should include the source code for any LGPL components.
>

It doesn't have to.
If GWT was modifying the LGPL works, it would need to comply with
other sections of the LGPL, but as it simply "uses" the works
unmodified, it is only required to comply with section 6.
See section 6 of LGPL 2.1 (which is the license for the LGPL
components of GWT):

"6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or
link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work
containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under
terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of
the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for
debugging such modifications.

You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the
Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by
this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If the work
during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the
copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a reference
directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one
of these things:

...
b) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the
Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at run time a copy
of the library already present on the user's computer system, rather
than copying library functions into the executable, and (2) will
operate properly with a modified version of the library, if the user
installs one, as long as the modified version is interface-compatible
with the version that the work was made with.
"

As GWT complies with section 6 (and is a work that uses the library),
using option b (note it says "you must do one of these things, not all
of these things"), there is no requirement they make an offer for
source.

HTH,
Dan

[Ian Petersen]

Isn't GWT released under the Apache license? I don't think it's
possible for GWT to violate the GPL. Of course, I'm not a lawyer....

Ian

[Daniel Jue]

You've stated some very bold claims.  How did you become so convinced of this violation and the need to address it?

Are you the "Beginning Rails" author? 

[Vitali Lovich]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Ian Petersen <ispe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Isn't GWT released under the Apache license?  I don't think it's
> possible for GWT to violate the GPL.  Of course, I'm not a lawyer....

Yes it s released as Apache. Of course it's possible for it to
violate the GPL (it doesn't as far as OI'm aware, but it is possible).
This is especially unlikely considering the amount of visibility of
the GWT project & I'm sure that lawyer's have vetted the licensing
issues.

Full source code access, BTW, is available at
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/.

>
> Ian
>
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM, allan <alla...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> LGPL/GPL have the obligation to provide source with any binary
>> distributions. Source can be provided directly with the binaries or in
>> an offer, made available to the public for 3 years.

GWT is not LGPL or GPL so that doesn't apply. AFAIK, they also don't
make use of any LGPL or GPL code - do you have any examples of this?

>>
>> You cannot fulfill the obligation by pointing to a 3rd party download
>> site for the source.  Go ask Cisco and others who have had to comply
>> with this requirement.

They are not pointing to a 3rd party download site anywhere - if you
don't know, Google owns the copyright to GWT & also hosts the GWT
project on Google code (along with other projects). As the copyright
owners of the code, they can do whatever they like (copyright holders
can obviously violate the terms of their license since their not going
to prosecute themselves).

>>
>> GWT/Google provides neither an offer or the source.

GWT provides the source.

>>
>> Not only is Google in violation but I, or any one redistributing GWT,
>> will be violating LGPL as well.  I will have to separately provide the
>> source any time I distribute GWT.

Please explain to me how the LGPL applies here - in particular, what
pieces of code are covered under this license. Not to mention that
all of the user-distributable stuff comes with source in the jars by
design because the compiler needs them for compilation , I don't even
see how this applies unless you were trying to distribute the compiler
(which again you still can even without the source).

>>
>> GWT package should include the source code for any LGPL components.

Please enumarate any LGPL components, let alone the ones that don't
come with source. BTW, if you don't modify the LGPL components,
pointing to the original project is sufficient (IANAL, so I could very
well be wrong on this). Not sure what the behaviour is with GPL (but
I'm pretty sure there you would have to provide the original source as
well - a link wouldn't be enough).

>>
>> How does one get Google GWT project managers to be aware of this issue?

If there are any real issues, they can be made aware, but there's no
point disturbing them with this nonsense (although they probably
monitor this list anyways).

>>
>> >
>>
>
> >
>

[Miles T.]

On Apr 6, 10:52 pm, Daniel Berlin <daniel.ber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 6, 4:27 pm, allan <allan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The LGPL does not require source, it is only one of a myriad of
> options to comply with it.

I think (but not sure) I've read somewhere a discussion with a FSF guy
saying that the other options were not appliable to GWT.
Anyway, why would GWT have to comply with LGPL. Does it use any LGPL
component ? I looked at http://code.google.com/intl/en/webtoolkit/terms.html,
it talks about JFreeChart. Didn't know JFreeChart was conveyed with
GWT ?!

[Miguel Ping]

Just click the 'about' button on the hosted mode browser (the bg
window)

On Apr 7, 9:43 am, "Miles T." <dupont.nico...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 6, 10:52 pm, Daniel Berlin <daniel.ber...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 6, 4:27 pm, allan <allan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The LGPL does not require source, it is only one of a myriad of
> > options to comply with it.
>
> I think (but not sure) I've read somewhere a discussion with a FSF guy
> saying that the other options were not appliable to GWT.
> Anyway, why would GWT have to comply with LGPL. Does it use any LGPL

> component ? I looked athttp://code.google.com/intl/en/webtoolkit/terms.html,

[Miles T.]

It says : "Could not locate 'about.html' in installation
directory." :-p

[Robert Hanson]

There is also an about.txt[html] with the GWT distribution.

Here are the notable bits:

| This product includes software developed by:
| - The Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/).
| - Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org/) with modifications
| - Tapestry (http://tapestry.apache.org/)
| - The Eclipse Foundation (http://www.eclipse.org/).
| - Java Development Tools (http://www.eclipse.org/jdt/)
| - Standard Widget Toolkit (http://www.eclipse.org/swt/) with modifications
| - The JFreeChart project (http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/)
| - The Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozilla.org/).
| - Mozilla 1.7.12 (http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.7.12/)
| - Rhino (http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/) with modifications
| - The OpenQA Project (http://openqa.org/)
| - Selenium-RC (http://selenium-rc.openqa.org/)
| - The WebKit Open Source Project (http://www.webkit.org)

So, there is probably some LGPL code in there. But all of this is
available in svn isn't it? Wouldn't that comply with any potential
"make the source available" rule?

Enough license talk... back to some coding.

Rob
http://roberthanson.org

[ginger_ninja]

What a farce. Who cares if it violates the LGPL (besides perhaps RMS)?
GWT is release under the Apache v2.0 License. The two are completely
separate from each other. About the only common heritage they share is
the fact that they're OSI approved.

On Apr 8, 12:18 am, Robert Hanson <iamroberthan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is also an about.txt[html] with the GWT distribution.
>
> Here are the notable bits:
>
> | This product includes software developed by:
> |  - The Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/).
> |    - Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org/) with modifications
> |    - Tapestry (http://tapestry.apache.org/)
> |  - The Eclipse Foundation (http://www.eclipse.org/).
> |    - Java Development Tools (http://www.eclipse.org/jdt/)
> |    - Standard Widget Toolkit (http://www.eclipse.org/swt/) with modifications
> |  - The JFreeChart project (http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/)
> |  - The Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozilla.org/).
> |    - Mozilla 1.7.12 (http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.7.12/)
> |    - Rhino (http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/) with modifications
> |  - The OpenQA Project (http://openqa.org/)
> |    - Selenium-RC (http://selenium-rc.openqa.org/)
> |  - The WebKit Open Source Project (http://www.webkit.org)
>
> So, there is probably some LGPL code in there.  But all of this is
> available in svn isn't it?  Wouldn't that comply with any potential
> "make the source available" rule?
>
> Enough license talk... back to some coding.
>

> Robhttp://roberthanson.org

[Ian Petersen]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 1:32 PM, ginger_ninja <david....@gmail.com> wrote:
> What a farce. Who cares if it violates the LGPL (besides perhaps RMS)?

That's a ridiculous comment. Because GWT is released under the Apache
license, I don't understand how this conversation even got started but
if, hypothetically, GWT _did_ violate the LGPL, that's an important
problem. Suggesting that RMS is the only person that could possbily
care is absurd.

[Ian Bambury]

I know *nothing* about licensing, but I've been following this, and I apologise if it's a stupid question but...

If you *don't* release a product under a certain licence, then how can it be possibly be a concern if the product doesn't comply to the licence it isn't released under?

Ian

http://examples.roughian.com

2009/4/8 Ian Petersen <ispe...@gmail.com>

[Vitali Lovich]

The original question was whether or not GWT was in violation of the LGPL, which it would only be if GWT utilized a LGPL component without following the license.

At that point, RMS would not care (or at least, would not be in a position to do anything about it).  The only people at that point that could start anything would be the copyright holders for the LGPL code of which GWT is in violation of.

License violations are a strict legal term that define whether or not you are using a licensed work (in this case a work with a copyright license) but not fulfilling its terms.  If you do not use any work under a specific license, you can never be in violation of that license.

It has nothing to do whether or not the license that you choose for your work is in the spirit of another license since you are free to pick any license without consequence (provided it is compatible with other licenses you may be using).

[Ian Petersen]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Ian Bambury <ianba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you *don't* release a product under a certain licence, then how can it be
> possibly be a concern if the product doesn't comply to the licence it isn't
> released under?

I think you've just summarized the irrelevance of this whole thread.

Ian

[Ian Petersen]

I'm a little too sarcastic for my own good. You could violate the GPL
(or any license) if you incorporated code from some other project into
GWT. Suppose I released a project under the GPL and somebody took
some code from my project and got it incorporated into GWT. GWT would
probably be unwittingly violating the GPL because it would be a
derivative work of my project and it's not being distributed under the
terms of the GPL. I don't think that was the scenario originally
presented in this thread, though, and I don't think there's any reason
to believe that GWT contains "contraband" code. Also, to contribute
to GWT, you first have to sign a document that says your contributions
are all "unencumbered" from a copyright perspective (and possibly a
patent perspective, too--I forget).

Ian

[Miles T.]

So GWT distribution includes JFreeChart which is LGPL. Problem would
be here, Allan, something wrong related to section 4 of the license ?

On 8 avr, 07:15, Ian Petersen <ispet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Ian Petersen <ispet...@gmail.com> wrote: