> >> * Do you have any third party dependencies in the Taverna core that have >> incompatible licenses (like GPL)? > > Unfortunately we do have a few of those, yes - the fact that we have > to move away from those was one of the things that we discussed a lot > in the Taverna community. >
Can you make sure a comprehensive list of those currently incompatible list of dependencies is included in your proposal. > > Taverna 2 is licensed as LGPL 2.1, which meant we could use several > LGPL libraries like Hibernate and RShell. Hibernate can be replaced by > other JPA providers (with some code update to remove Hibernate > specific calls), while the RShell support would have to be moved out > to an separately installable plugin. > Do you have adequate rights to change the license wholesale? > > The Astronomy edition of Taverna includes a plugin called > AstroTaverna, which is GPL3 due to its inclusion of the Topcat and > STILTS dependencies. > > The AstroTaverna community was therefore a bit sceptical about moving > to Apache - but we concluded that as they would keep maintaining > AstroTaverna as standalone plugins and instead of having multiple > downloads for different editions, with Taverna 3 move to a "Start > screen" that installs plugins from possibly third-party sites (Eclipse > style). > > http://smtp.iaa.es/pipermail/astrotaverna-users/20140529/thread.html > > > Here luckily our plugin system (OSGi) will help us out - so those bits > that truly depend on GPL or LGPL would have to be maintained outside > Apache. What perhaps we need to prepare a bit clearer is exactly > which plugins will be in the Apache transfer, and which would stay > outside. > > This sounds like fragmenting your existing community before you really even get started. I believe the ASF is a great place, but I am not convinced it's the best place for everyone. > The Taverna Workbench installers currently include platform-specific > binaries of OpenJDK 7, which is licensed under GPL 2 with classpath > exception. It is likely that under Apache we could not distribute > OpenJDK - but perhaps it would instead be allowed to distribute the > normal JDK binaries? (For Taverna 2 we did not distribute the normal > JDK as it can be seen as incompatible with GPL, which LGPL can be > upgraded to). Do you know of any Apache projects that do this, like > perhaps OpenOffice? > > An alternative is for the installer to download JDK on demand - but > would that require the installer itself (currently Install4j) to be > replaced? > > >> * Would you like developer-contributed plugins to be covered within a future >> "Apache Taverna" project? > > As we've seen, keeping plugin developers on the "outside" of the > project has isolated them from the core development. We would > therefore like to encourage any new plugin developers to eventually > make their plugin a part of an Apache Taverna project - as we have > done historically with successful plugins. Apache's use of CLAs is I > must admit a bit of a hindrance to this as opposed to the Github > Laissez-faire style - - it has kept myself away from Apache projects > earlier when my suggested patch was deemed "significant" - yet the > legal department of the University spent 8 months reviewing that patch > and Apache's CLA before finally signing. > > Yet we consider Taverna to be such a mature project that we want IP > and licensing to be done correctly - and as you see our earlier > insistence on keeping CLAs for all Taverna 2 development means that we > are now in a position to relicense Taverna and change ownership to a > foundation like Apache. > > I see two paragraphs here that don't answer the question posed. Where will plugin development happen in an ideal world? One followup question - what kind of build/CI resources does the University of Manchester provide? What manner of resources do you believe you'll need if the project moves to the ASF? --David --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
