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LEGAL question

9 replies
sanjay_dasgupta
Joined: 2009-12-08,
User offline. Last seen 1 year 10 weeks ago.
Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar) along with the release of a free, open-source project?
Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without any changes) into the other project's jar files?
Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
Thanks,
- Sanjay
Stefan Langer
Joined: 2009-10-23,
User offline. Last seen 42 years 45 weeks ago.
Re: LEGAL question
Depends on the licenses. Take a look at the license provided by scala and at the license of your project and see if they are incompatible and if you are unsure grab a lawyer and don't believe anything fyou read on the internet.

-Stefan

2010/3/12 Sanjay Dasgupta <sanjay.dasgupta@gmail.com>
Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar) along with the release of a free, open-source project?
Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without any changes) into the other project's jar files?
Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
Thanks,
- Sanjay

Johannes Rudolph 2
Joined: 2010-02-12,
User offline. Last seen 42 years 45 weeks ago.
Re: LEGAL question

Here's the link to Scala's license:

http://www.scala-lang.org/node/146

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Sanjay Dasgupta
wrote:
> Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar)
> along with the release of a free, open-source project?
> Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without
> any changes) into the other project's jar files?
> Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
> Thanks,
> - Sanjay

Kevin Wright
Joined: 2009-06-09,
User offline. Last seen 49 weeks 3 days ago.
Re: LEGAL question

This is the relevant section from that license, so it looks like the answer is "yes"
No explicit mention is made of repackaging jars, but I believe this is classed as binary redistribution.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software in source
or binary form for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the following conditions are met:

   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

   3. Neither the name of the EPFL nor the names of its contributors
      may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
      software without specific prior written permission.

On 12 March 2010 08:56, Johannes Rudolph <johannes.rudolph@googlemail.com> wrote:
Here's the link to Scala's license:

http://www.scala-lang.org/node/146


On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Sanjay Dasgupta
<sanjay.dasgupta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar)
> along with the release of a free, open-source project?
> Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without
> any changes) into the other project's jar files?
> Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
> Thanks,
> - Sanjay



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Johannes

-----------------------------------------------
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Joshua.Suereth
Joined: 2008-09-02,
User offline. Last seen 32 weeks 5 days ago.
Re: LEGAL question
IF I remember right, the GPL conflicts with some other OSS license because one requires you to display the licensing and the other requires you *don't* display the licensing or some such nonesense.    I believe it was GPL and BSD (because we had legal issues using openssh alongside GPL libraries).  If I recall, the Scala license is a modified BSD license.  I can find out more info if desired, but most people skirt the BSD/GPL incompatibilities anyway.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Kevin Wright <kev.lee.wright@googlemail.com> wrote:

This is the relevant section from that license, so it looks like the answer is "yes"
No explicit mention is made of repackaging jars, but I believe this is classed as binary redistribution.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software in source
or binary form for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the following conditions are met:

   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

   3. Neither the name of the EPFL nor the names of its contributors
      may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
      software without specific prior written permission.

On 12 March 2010 08:56, Johannes Rudolph <johannes.rudolph@googlemail.com> wrote:
Here's the link to Scala's license:

http://www.scala-lang.org/node/146


On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Sanjay Dasgupta
<sanjay.dasgupta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar)
> along with the release of a free, open-source project?
> Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without
> any changes) into the other project's jar files?
> Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
> Thanks,
> - Sanjay



--
Johannes

-----------------------------------------------
Johannes Rudolph
http://virtual-void.net



--
Kevin Wright

mail/google talk: kev.lee.wright@googlemail.com
wave: kev.lee.wright@googlewave.com
skype: kev.lee.wright
twitter: @thecoda


Seth Tisue
Joined: 2008-12-16,
User offline. Last seen 34 weeks 3 days ago.
Re: LEGAL question

>>>>> "Josh" == Josh Suereth writes:

Josh> IF I remember right, the GPL conflicts with some other OSS
Josh> license because one requires you to display the licensing and the
Josh> other requires you *don't* display the licensing or some such
Josh> nonesense. I believe it was GPL and BSD (because we had legal
Josh> issues using openssh alongside GPL libraries). If I recall, the
Josh> Scala license is a modified BSD license. I can find out more
Josh> info if desired, but most people skirt the BSD/GPL
Josh> incompatibilities anyway.

It's the original, 4-clause BSD license that's GPL-incompatible. That
version is not much used any more so the issue you're describing is now
rare. Nearly everyone using a BSD-style license these days, including
Scala, sensibly bases their license on the 3-clause "revised BSD", which
does not have this issue.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

dcsobral
Joined: 2009-04-23,
User offline. Last seen 38 weeks 5 days ago.
Re: LEGAL question
Not exactly. The original BSD license, known as 4-clause BSD license, required that any advertisement mentioning features or use of the software was required to include a notice that said product included code by such and such.
For instance, if Scala were using such a license, and you used it on your site, and then went to create an ad saying "Rock-solid stability provided by use of Scala immutable collections", then you'd be required to put that notice.
If, on the other hand, you said none such thing, you wouldn't need to do anything.
However, GPL has no similar clause, but has a clause saying you can't put any restriction over what exists with GPL. Naturally, the solution would be to add such clause to the GPL. ;-)
Well, jokes apart, that clause was _rescinded_ by Berkely from it's softwares, and most people still using the 4-clause removed it as well. So even people who had originally licensed the code under the 4-clause BSD license, were automatically free of said clause.
This was done so that code that was originally licensed under BSD could be re-licensed under GPL. The opposite can't happen.
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@gmail.com> wrote:
IF I remember right, the GPL conflicts with some other OSS license because one requires you to display the licensing and the other requires you *don't* display the licensing or some such nonesense.    I believe it was GPL and BSD (because we had legal issues using openssh alongside GPL libraries).  If I recall, the Scala license is a modified BSD license.  I can find out more info if desired, but most people skirt the BSD/GPL incompatibilities anyway.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Kevin Wright <kev.lee.wright@googlemail.com> wrote:

This is the relevant section from that license, so it looks like the answer is "yes"
No explicit mention is made of repackaging jars, but I believe this is classed as binary redistribution.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software in source
or binary form for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the following conditions are met:

   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

   3. Neither the name of the EPFL nor the names of its contributors
      may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
      software without specific prior written permission.

On 12 March 2010 08:56, Johannes Rudolph <johannes.rudolph@googlemail.com> wrote:
Here's the link to Scala's license:

http://www.scala-lang.org/node/146


On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Sanjay Dasgupta
<sanjay.dasgupta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it legal to bundle the scala jars (scala-library.jar and scala-swing.jar)
> along with the release of a free, open-source project?
> Also, is it permissible to repackage the contents of the Scala jars (without
> any changes) into the other project's jar files?
> Any advice or pointers would be apprecited.
> Thanks,
> - Sanjay



--
Johannes

-----------------------------------------------
Johannes Rudolph
http://virtual-void.net



--
Kevin Wright

mail/google talk: kev.lee.wright@googlemail.com
wave: kev.lee.wright@googlewave.com
skype: kev.lee.wright
twitter: @thecoda





--
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.
Joshua.Suereth
Joined: 2008-09-02,
User offline. Last seen 32 weeks 5 days ago.
Re: LEGAL question
Ah, good news.  As I stated, for us it was an issue with openssh and our lawyers freaking out.  I didn't remember the particulars.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Seth Tisue <seth@tisue.net> wrote:
>>>>> "Josh" == Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@gmail.com> writes:

 Josh> IF I remember right, the GPL conflicts with some other OSS
 Josh> license because one requires you to display the licensing and the
 Josh> other requires you *don't* display the licensing or some such
 Josh> nonesense.  I believe it was GPL and BSD (because we had legal
 Josh> issues using openssh alongside GPL libraries).  If I recall, the
 Josh> Scala license is a modified BSD license.  I can find out more
 Josh> info if desired, but most people skirt the BSD/GPL
 Josh> incompatibilities anyway.

It's the original, 4-clause BSD license that's GPL-incompatible.  That
version is not much used any more so the issue you're describing is now
rare.  Nearly everyone using a BSD-style license these days, including
Scala, sensibly bases their license on the 3-clause "revised BSD", which
does not have this issue.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

--
Seth Tisue @ Northwestern University | http://tisue.net
lead developer, NetLogo: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

jonathan mawson
Joined: 2010-01-28,
User offline. Last seen 42 years 45 weeks ago.
Re: LEGAL question

Stefan Langer-4 wrote:
>
> don't believe anything you read on the internet.
>

Excellent advice, but that should have been "Don't believe anything you read
on the internet, EXCEPT FOR THIS."

Stefan Langer
Joined: 2009-10-23,
User offline. Last seen 42 years 45 weeks ago.
Re: LEGAL question
kind of like name  a world power with two letters -- ME

2010/3/13 jonathan mawson <umptious@gmail.com>



Stefan Langer-4 wrote:
>
>  don't believe anything you read on the internet.
>

Excellent advice, but that should have been "Don't believe anything you read
on the internet, EXCEPT FOR THIS."
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