Chapter 1: Apache Tomcat Comparison with Other Licenses
Chapter 1: Apache Tomcat Comparison with Other Licenses Among the previously mentioned and rather large group of other open source licenses, two licenses are particularly popular at the present time: the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Let s take a look at how each of these licenses compares to the Apache License. GPL The GNU Project created and actively evangelizes the GPL. The GNU Project is somewhat similar to the ASF, with the exception that the GNU Project would like all of the non-free (that is, closed source or proprietary) software in the world to become free. The ASF has no such (stated) desire and simply wants to provide free software. Free software can mean one of two entirely different things: software that doesn t cost anything and software that can be freely copied, distributed, and modified by anyone (thus, the source code is included or is easily accessible). Such software can be distributed either free or for a fee. A simpler way to explain the difference between these two types of free is to compare free, as in free beer, and free, as in free speech. The GNU Project s goal is to create free software of the latter category. All uses of the phrase free software in the remainder of this section use this definition. The differences between the Apache License and the GPL thus mirror the distinct philosophies of the two organizations. Specifically, the GPL has the following key differences from the Apache License: . No non-free software may contain GPL-licensed products or use GPL-licensed source code. If non-free software is found to contain GPL-licensed binaries or code, it must remove such elements or become free software itself. . All modifications made to GPL-licensed products must be released as free software if the modifications are also publicly released. These two differences have huge implications for commercial enterprises. If Tomcat were licensed under the GPL, any product that contained Tomcat would also have to be free software. Furthermore, while the Apache License permits an organization to make modifications to Tomcat and sell it under a different name as a closed source product, the GPL would not allow any such act to occur; the new derived product would also have to be released as free software. LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is similar to the GPL, with one major difference: Non- free software may contain LGPL-licensed products. The LGPL license is commonly referred to as the library GLP because it is intended primarily for software libraries that are themselves free software, but whose authors want them to be available for use by companies who produce non-free software. If Tomcat were licensed under the LGPL, it could be embedded in non-free software, but Tomcat could not itself be modified and released as a non-free software product. For more information on the GPL and LGPL licenses, see www.gnu.org.
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