Details
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Question
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Status: Closed
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Major
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Resolution: Fixed
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None
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None
Description
Last year it was accepted [1][2] that, under certain circumstances, GPL+CPE binaries could be included in Apache convenience binaries. However, this would have to be assessed on a case by case basis by legal as well as the PMC. Thus the NetBeans project would like to request permission to start including nb-javac in NetBeans convenience binaries.
Before doing so, the NetBeans PMC will take steps to ensure that the CPE fully applies in this case (eg. CPE is in every source file), and also in line with [3]. What further steps may ASF Legal require in order to assess or allow us to proceed with this plan?
This issue overlaps with, updates and replaces the still open LEGAL-489 [4].
nb-javac is a patched version of javac that was originally part of the NetBeans source. For obvious reasons, it was not included in the donation to ASF. LEGAL-279 [5] gave us permission to allow as an optional, user-installed dependency. More information on why it exists is at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Overview%3A+nb-javac The optionality is a cause of significant technical and end user issues however, hence wanting to move away from that situation if at all possible.
Until recently, the nb-javac code was within the legacy NetBeans infrastructure at Oracle, maintained by a team there. It has now been extracted from that infrastructure, and has its own source repository, issue queue, etc. at https://github.com/oracle/nb-javac/ with binaries distributed via Maven Central. Maintenance and distribution is moving to OracleLabs. Clarified to meet Roy's comments on source being "entirely separate from our products".
Likewise, on the subject of independence, while primarily intended as a library to be consumed by NetBeans, it has been used by other unrelated projects (eg. a Java LSP server) that have benefited from the editor-oriented features NetBeans requires.
Let us know if you require any further info with regards to this.
Many thanks, Neil.
[1] https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rfb90043e7aa7296e0d090b424b6e56ee360ce6eb0c094d9ee034a1a9%40%3Clegal-discuss.apache.org%3E
[2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-529
[3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-523?focusedCommentId=17177212&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#comment-17177212
[4] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-489
[5] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-279