I need some help from the build / packaging folks on the list. We need to remove cloud-mysql-connector-java-5.1.7-bin.jar from our source tree, and I'm pretty certain that we're NOT going to be able to distribute it in the binary builds.
I did a bit of research in the legal-discuss@a.o archives [1], and am under the impression that we are best served by making this a build-time dependency and a system dependency for run-time. MySQL does provide a FOSS linking exception [2], for which Apache 2 licensed projects are acceptable. However, the consensus at ASF seems to be that including that binary in a release artifact would cause the GPL copy-left rules to govern the rest of the project... therefore making it something to avoid. I'm pretty certain that we can work around this though. Here's my proposal: First, we make the mysql-connector-java.jar file a build dependency that gets downloaded by the developer. Second, we do NOT distribute this JAR in a binary release artifact hosted at ASF. Third, we document it as a system dependency, and update the reference deb/spec files. Last, if there is a non-package installation process, we should include downloading the jar as a pre-requisite step for the user. I think I found the appropriate packages at [3] and [4] below. Does this plan sound good? And can someone step up and own making these changes? -chip [1] http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3A%20org.apache.legal-discuss%20mysql#query:list%3A%20org.apache.legal-discuss%20mysql+page:1+mid:bqk52ftrt3of7cmg+state:results [2] http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/ [3] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/mysql-connector-java [4] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/libmysql-java
