[jboss-user] [JBoss Tools] - JBoss Tools: Hibernate Tools: LGPL and EPL license conflict in the same file

[Tapio Siilola]

Tapio Siilola [https://community.jboss.org/people/esiilola] created the discussion

"JBoss Tools: Hibernate Tools: LGPL and EPL license conflict in the same file"

To view the discussion, visit: https://community.jboss.org/message/752204#752204

--------------------------------------------------------------
Hello

My perspective is that of a lawyer, so please excuse me for digging into old stuff - it merely comes with the job.  :) 

I'm tasked with analyzing Hibernate Tools, a part of JBoss Tools, to find out its licensing. In particular, the package I need to review is an "all sources" package of JBoss Tools available at: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jboss/JBossTools-ALL-sources-3.0.3.v200910211631N-H194-GA.zip, (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jboss/JBossTools-ALL-sources-3.0.3.v200910211631N-H194-GA.zip)where the /hibernatetools folder contains Hibernate Tools (v.3.2.4 I believe).

I understand this version of Hibernate Tools (without accounting for dependencies) is predominantly licensed with LGPL v.2.1 (or later), and parts are under Eclipse Public License 1.0. However, upon a cursory review I found two files (there may be more) which contain both the LGPL and EPL license headers. These files are:
hibernatetools/plugins/org.hibernate.eclipse.mapper/src/org/hibernate/eclipse/mapper/views/contentoutline/JFaceNodeAdapterFactoryForXML.java
hibernatetools/plugins/org.hibernate.eclipse.console/src/org/hibernate/eclipse/console/views/navigator/ClearPlaceHolderJob.java
The EPL copyright holder is "IBM and others", while the LGPL copyright holder is JBoss. It seems to me this combination of two copyleft (albeit weak) licenses in one file may not be compatible. 

For the vast majority of files  in this package, when JBoss is a co-copyright owner in a file the file is distributed under the EPL license. Is this two licenses in a single file simply an oversight, and can the file be considered to be fully under one of the licenses? Or is there something else at play here, perhaps a different interpretation of the licenses, or a permission from the copyright holder? Our issue is simply wanting our forms of use/redistribution of the component to be compliant with whatever the license terms are. Here's the license header of the first file:


*/*******************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2001, 2004 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
*  http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* 
* Contributors:/*
* JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source
* Copyright 2005, JBoss Inc., and individual contributors as indicated
* by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
* full listing of individual contributors.
*
* This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
* under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
* published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of
* the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
* Lesser General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
* License along with this software; if not, write to the Free
* Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
* 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site:  http://www.fsf.org http://www.fsf.org.
*/
*

Thank you in advance for your time and any possible replies.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Reply to this message by going to Community
[https://community.jboss.org/message/752204#752204]

Start a new discussion in JBoss Tools at Community
[https://community.jboss.org/choose-container!input.jspa?contentType=1&containerType=14&container=2128]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/jboss-user/attachments/20120806/068dd400/attachment.html