[Rxtx] Proposal 3.0; Apache and LGPL license for the RXSL

[Dr. Douglas Lyon]

Hi All,
I have been waiting a day for things to cool down.
Licensing appears to be a hot-button topic.

I have no objection to dual license the interfaces as  both
Apache and LGPL.

Some thoughts:
Goal: developers wish to work together on a
common piece of code that the team needs.

It makes sense that the
code base they work on should be Apache-licensed.  That makes it possible
for the team to use and develop common code, even if the end result
  is LGPL'd as a whole.

If we combine licenses, we must follow the terms of both
licenses when distributing the combined work.

Thus, the dual license contains the super
set of terms in the licenses of Apached and LGPL.

This should address concern about using Apache-licensed code within
LGPL projects due to the FSF's claim that they are incompatible.

Here is a draft statement for RXSL:

The RXTX Specification Library (RXSL) uses a dual license strategy 
for the source code.
These licenses are the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and 
the Apache License.
I strongly encourage users to use the LGPL license and participate 
fully in the free software community.

Dual licensing of the RXSL source code provides open and free access 
to the technology both for the GPL community and for other developers 
or companies that cannot use the GPL.

Dual license is common practice in open source projects like 
OpenOffice, Perl and Mozilla.
Through the combined use of LGPL and Apache license, developers will 
have a high degree of freedom yet compatibility and interoperability 
will be preserved.

You can freely modify, extend, and improve the RXSL source code. The 
only question is whether or not you must provide the source code and 
contribute modifications to the community. The GNU and Apache 
licenses allow different ranges of flexibility in this regard, but in 
the end, regardless of the license used, any and all incompatible 
changes must be published openly.

Note that there is the RXTX Reference Model that uses the org.rxtx 
package, which itself is protected by the LGPL. This may be part of 
the distribution, however, it can not be redistributed using a 
different license.

Is everybody OK with this?

Thanks Trent, great idea!
  - Doug