[josm-dev] Possible copyright violation

[Dirk Stöcker]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009, Giovanni Mascellani wrote:

> Since about the start of June JOSM gets compiled with some pieces of
> code coming from the ANT codebase, which are copyrighted by the Apache
> Foundation and are distributed under an Apache 2.0 license.
> Unfortunately this license is not compatible with GPL-2[1], so these two
> licenses cannot mixed up like what you are currently doing with JOSM. I
> don't know whether the ANT project or the Apache Foundation would sue
> you for this (and I'm not tied at all with them, nor speak on their
> behalf), but, for what I understand, compiling JOSM is illegal.

That is a view which is very likely not right. Compiling is not illegal 
when non-illegal parts are integrated. What may be illegal is releasing a 
compiled version when declared with wrong license. Nevertheless for 
distributions the result is the same :-)

> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License#GPL_compatibility
>
> Fortunately GPL-3 is not incompatible with Apache-2.0, so I think you
> could upgrade all your code to GPL-3 and avoid any problem. This, for
> instance, would enable me to package and upload latest JOSM release to
> Debian.

JOSM's code is stated as GPL V2 or later. If Debian requires explicit 
specification then you can savely declare it as GPLv3. There is no 
necessarity for us to do so with the codebase, as the ANT parts aren't 
directly included in the source repositories.

Actually it seems we do not explicitely state the license for JOSM binary 
anywhere. Maybe the CONTRIBUTION and LICENSE files should be updated and 
the LICENSE file also be shown in About dialog.

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)