On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 08:51:41AM +0100, Mikolaj Izdebski wrote:
OSGi libraries are widely used and I made several attempts to
package
them. From what I remember there are two main problems:
1. In order to download anything from upstream site [1] you need to
accept proprietary license first. It was described above in more detail.
2. There is no source code provided (understood as preferable form for
editing, as defined in Open Source Definition, or in the Apache License
itself). Code included in *-sources.jar files is not source code - there
are no build instructions, test cases or such there - only pure Java
code, which is meant primarily for debugging. They have a Github account
[2], but it does *not* contain code for most common OSGi libraries. I
failed to find any documentation on how source code can be obtained.
So to answer your question: we don't need to package anything except
software which is (supposedly) under Apache License, but we are not sure
whether (1) there are additional non-free licensing terms besides the
Apache License that apply to the software, making it non-free,
Any Apache License-covered code in the source jar should be treated as
licensed solely under that license. Therefore, once you actually have
that code, it is free software.
and (2)
whether the software actually meets definitions of free software and
Open Source Definition - requirement of source code availability is
questionable here.
I'm assuming the issue here is a Fedora packaging issue, right? If
buildable source code is not available, that itself is a Fedora
packaging problem, independent of any licensing concerns. One could
always take the Apache-licensed source files and attempt to fork the
libraries in question (in part because of the answer to the first
question).
Richard