Re: [dom4j-dev] GNU JAXP license violation

On Nov 4, 2004, at 5:15 AM, Elliotte Harold wrote:

> dom4j appears to be in violation of the GNUJAXP License unless it has 
> special permission from the FSF. Does it?

It may be, but since it is being brought up, it looks as if the GNU 
JAXP project is in violation of the Aelfred license as well.  See 
below.

>
> Specifically the latest release of dom4j (and probably earlier 
> releases) has taken the code from GNU JAXP, *modified it*, and 
> incorporated it into its code base which is published under a BSD 
> license. They are not merely linking to the GPL code as permitted by 
> the GPL with library exception.
>
> The modifications are probably not major. The only one I know of is 
> changing the package name to org.dom4j.aelfred and org.dom4j.aelfred2 
> instead of gnu.jaxp.aelfred/gnu.jaxp.aelfred2 though there may be 
> others. I suspect the problem might be able to be cured by linking to 
> the unmodified gnujaxp.jar instead of incorporating the Gnu code 
> directly in the dom4j code base.

After looking at the code, the package names are 
org.dom4j.io.[aelfred|aelfred2], just to be correct.  Upon first look, 
the package org.dom4j.io.aelfred package looks as if it just a straight 
copy of the Aelfred code, which is not under the GPL, so that looks 
fine.

The package org.dom4j.io.aelfred2, however contains the GPL headers in 
the code, so it looks as if dom4j is in violation.  However, I would 
also say that the GNU JAXP project is in violation of the orignal 
license, as the changes made are not 'clearly documented'.  Refer to 
the aelfred license, and the sentence stating: "You are free to modify 
AElfred for your own use and
// to redistribute AElfred with your modifications, provided that the
// modifications are clearly documented."

Are there any changes?  If there are, dom4j is in violation as well as 
GNU JAXP.  If there are no changes, then dom4j may just import the 
original non-GPL sources, and there are no violations.

Viewing the cvsweb for GNU JAXP, it seems that there are some changes.

Scott Sanders