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?
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Answer
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.