> This is not an issue of whether or not we can distribute these jars, (we > can). It boils down to the _requirements_ of distributing them, i.e. the > inclusion of license text and attribution notices as required. > > So long as we are properly documenting license and attribution, we can > check all of these jars into subversion and ship them in our release > artifacts. No one is disputing this. We used to do this. > > If we are not distributing them at all, then there is no requirement > that we include this documentation. No one is disputing this. This is > how we are doing it now. > > It has been suggested that we dynamically retrieve these third-party > jars using Ivy and add them to the binary release artifact without the > licensing and attribution documentation. This would be *awesome*. One 4 > line patch applied to build.xml and everyone gets what they want. > However, I am disputing the notion that we can legally distribute these > third-party jars this way. I don't think we can (I want to be wrong). >
yes, and my point is that if there is any question in your guys minds on if it is allowed or not that is an issue for apache legal (via jira) for a definitive answer I am not a lawyer, but I'll play one on a mailing list.. As a consumer of the cassandra project it is of critical importance that I am clearly given what license and attribution is required for both cassandra and any underlying dependencies which are required for it to operate at its base functionality. In my mind any tactic to get around the spirit of the apache license or release policy to this effect would be a 'bad thing' (tm). Yes the onus is on me to validate that any system I deploy or software that I write does not violate my personal or corporate polices, this is not an area to play fast and loose with. Clear attribution and licensing is critically important in this day and age. I would certainly be responsible for managing licensing for any third party libraries I wanted to use to connect to cassandra as a client of course if I was using something not distributed with cassandra itself. I suspect you'll have to bite the bullet, but if there is any confusion on the correct way to go with this, passing it by legal is the way to go. cheers! jesse
