[LEGAL-251] Can an Apache Project depend upon a binary-only dependencies available under a permissible license

• Type: Question
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Aditya Kishore
• Created: 29/Apr/16 22:22
• Updated: 12/May/16 16:33
• Resolved: 12/May/16 16:33

Description

While researching on this, ran into many related queries and their answers but could not find one which address this specifically.

In one place, LEGAL-230, it appears it is okay to depend on a binary whose source code is not published but is available under a permissible license.

To ask it specifically, let's say if there is a binary version of a library, 'foo', available under one of the permissible license but no source is available.

In such case, can an Apache project

1. Have a compile time dependency on such binary?
2. Include this binary in its distribution?

Thanks for your help!

Updated: to add specific information.

Apache Drill has a pluggable storage plugin model which allows it to access data from variety of data sources.

One of the plugin, enables access to MapR-DB which is a proprietary NoSQL database and thus its client libraries are not released with sources.

So far the Drill/MapR-DB plugin code is hosted outside of Drill main code base and I was hoping to contribute the maprdb plugin source code with other storage plugins.

This plugin code depends upon maprdb client which is not available in source format.