The front-end of the BRMS destined for Drools 5 appears to use
the GWT-EXT library, which in turn requires the Ext JS library.
However, one of my colleagues has pointed out that as of April 21st
2008, the EXT JS library is now licensed under GPL (v3), whereas prior
to this it was licensed under LGPL.
I don't know too much about licensing, but isn't this going to
have an impact on the final Drools 5.0 licensing? From the little I
know about licensing, if you use a GPL library (ext-core.js etc in the
BRMS) then any derived code (e.g.. Drools) can only be distributed
under GPL as well, so Drools couldn't be distributed under Apache 2
anymore?
Its a bit bonkers of EXT JS to suddenly change a license from
LGPL to GPL and there is definitely a "heated" debate going on in the
GWT-EXT and other forums. I hope it's appropriate to post this on the
dev list, and apologies if not.
We are currently on 2.0.2, which does not require us to be GPL. Either
way client side .js cannot infect server side code, so it wouldn't
impact the main product. We are looking to see if we can continue on a
lgpl fork.