android thread library ported to uclibc

Jeremy Bowen jeremy.bowen at pertronic.co.nz
Wed Nov 19 20:55:35 UTC 2008


On Thursday 20 November 2008 9:06:17 am matthieu castet wrote:
> everything comes from
> http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/bionic.git;a=summary
> (libc and libc/bionic directories).
>
> NOTICE file is 3-clause BSD license
> copyright headers are 2-clause BSD license.

As far as I can tell, the Android source code is licensed under the "Apache 
Software License version 2.0"

The previously referenced URL regarding GPL compatible licenses 
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses) has 
this to say about license compatibility.

=========================================================================
Apache License, Version 2.0
This is a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GPL.
Please note that this license is not compatible with GPL version 2, because it 
has some requirements that are not in the older version. These include 
certain patent termination and indemnification provisions.
=======================================================================

uClibc indicates that it is licensed under the LGPL v2.1 in the COPYING.LIB 
file in the root of the source tree.

     GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
        Version 2.1, February 1999


I believe that incorporating code from an Apache Software Licence v2.0 in an 
LGPL v2.1 licensed project would be impossible unless and until all 
contributors to uClibc have been contacted and have agreed to release their 
contributions under a LGPL v3 license.

At this point uClibc could be re-released under LGPL v3 and only then could 
include ASL v2.0 code.

ArsTechnica seems to confirm my conclusion regarding the ASL and GPLv2 vs 
GPLv3 towards the 2nd half of paragraph 7 of this article:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071106-why-google-chose-the-apache-software-license-over-gplv2.html

-- 
Cheers
JeremyB



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