On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 03:01, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:
> in  
> view of the positions recently taken by FSF with respect to LGPL and  
> Java-based libraries, which has taken the view that clients of  
> "included" Java libraries are virally attached by LGPL.  As understood  
> from skimming blogs discussing the issues, Apache foundation has opted  
> to eschew LGPL libraries, in part, because of this FSF gloss.
> 
Of course, this is largely political rather than legal. First, the FSF
is bound to give the widest possible interpretation of their own
(politically inspired) license; second, the ASF is not bound to go into
a public fight with an entity that lots view as a sort of sibling
organization.

Jar files are very similar to shared libraries, and when studying the
LGPL in respect to Java development years ago, I concluded that binding
.jar files would fall under clause 6. For Squeak, the situation is much
muddier, because we currently have no way to get the 'anti-viral'
protection offered by clause 6.

What I do wonder about: what's the fuzz? Clause 6 is *exactly* the
clause that protects the 'host' program against the library w.r.t.
virality, so this should be *good* news for the Java community (well,
now news - lots of us already new this since, say, 1995). Did no-one
read the news post on gmane.org and then the LGPL?

-- 
Disclaimer: all Dutchmen are liars