[Bug 1381892] Review Request: osgi-core - OSGi Core API

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1381892



--- Comment #1 from Michael Simacek <msimacek@xxxxxxxxxx> ---
There have been some doubts about the licensing of the artifact, due to the
fact that in order to download it from upstream web page, it requires the user
to agree to a non-free OSGi specification license.

The following is a legal explanation of why this shouldn't be an obstacle for
including it in Fedora, kindly provided by Richard Fontana (via email):

The source files in the JAR, containing Apache License 2.0 notices,
are free software, and should be acceptable for packaging in Fedora
and RHEL.

There is definitely something confusing here: the spec license would
seem to apply to the JAR contents as well as the pdf containing the
specification.

However, the spec license has to be read in light of the fact that the
same group granting the spec license is also the group that has
explicitly placed those source files under the Apache License 2.0.

I read the spec license as applying in some sense to the specification
document but not applying to any source files licensed by the OSGi
Alliance under the Apache License. 

Specifically, the spec license says:

  You are not authorized to create any derivative work of the
  Specification. However, to the extent that an implementation of the
  Specification would necessarily be a derivative work of the
  Specification, OSGi also grants you a perpetual, non-exclusive,
  worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, limited license (without the
  right to sublicense) under any applicable copyrights, to create
  and/or distribute an implementation of the Specification that: (i)
  fully implements the Specification including all its required
  interfaces and functionality; (ii) does not modify, subset, superset
  or otherwise extend the OSGi Name Space, or include any public or
  protected packages, classes, Java interfaces, fields or methods
  within the OSGi Name Space other than those required and authorized
  by the Specification. An implementation that does not satisfy
  limitations (i)-(ii) is not considered an implementation of the
  Specification, does not receive the benefits of this license, and
  must not be described as an implementation of the Specification.

The Apache License on the other hand explicitly permits creation of
derivative works even if such derivative works fall outside the
conditions here. I.e., one could take the source files in the JAR and
use it to fork the OSGi standard, or to create a nonconformant
implementation of the OSGi standard.

Essentially, the Apache License 2.0 supersedes the spec license as far
as the source files in the JAR are concerned.

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