IKVM and Licensing

Question

Hi all.

I have been looking into IKVMing Apache's FOP project to use with our .NET app. It's a commercial product, and looking into licensing, IKVM runs into some sticky areas because of its use of GNU Classpath. From what I've seen, no one can say for sure if this stuff can be used in a commercial product. Has anyone used IKVM, or an IKVM'd product, in a commercial product? Here's what I've found so far:

IKVM license page, which notes that one dll contains code from other projects, their license GPLv2 + Classpath Exception

Saxon for .NET is generated with IKVM, but released under the Apache license...

Anyone have experience with this?

Answer 1

I'm not a lawyer but all licenses mentioned are okay to be used in commercial products as long as you don't make any changes and claim the code is yours.

I think if you don't wanna risk anything you should consult a lawyer.

Answer 2

There are multiple issues here as ikvm is currently being transitioned away from the GNU classpath system to Sun's OpenJDK. Both are licensed as GPL+Exceptions to state explicitly that applications which merely use the OpenJDK libraries will not be considered derived works.

Generally speaking, applications which rely upon components with defined specs such as this do not fall under the GPL anyway. For example, linking against public POSIX APIs does not trigger GPL reliance in a Linux application, despite the kernel being GPL. A similar principal will usually (the details can be tricky) apply to replacing Sun's Java with a FOSS/GPL implementation.

Answer 3

Just a quick update on this after noticing the question, for anyone browsing by.

IKVM seem to have updated to use the OpenJDK and not the GNU Classpath; infact IKVM.net have removed the comment from their license page.