3GPP is a partnership of telecommunications-related organizations designed to create “evolved Third Generation and beyond Mobile System specifications”. So, in other words, it’s an effort to develop certain specifications relating to 3G mobile communications.  The 3GPP AMR Speech Codec Library is a suite of tests for verifying that an implementation complies with the relevant specification.

License Issue

3GPP AMR Speech Codec Library was requested by an OpenLogic customer. Specifications can be a challenge because often times a specification itself is not open source but a reference implementation is, or vice-versa. During the certification process, OpenLogic could find no open source license or statements as to whether the project was open source, though a statement was found indicating that the specification is free for commercial use. The information included on the project website around legal issues was confusing and of limited use. Additionally, an unusual proprietary license was included with the technical specification, but not with the source code.

This combination of circumstances made it difficult if not impossible to determine the actual licensing terms of the package. Our analysis determined that although it was free and the source was available, the licensing terms were not consistent with OpenLogic’s definition of open source software. Normally, the certification effort might end here, but since this package was specifically requested by a customer, we escalated the issue to our legal staff.

Resolution

The OpenLogic legal team returned the following assessment:

• Neither the codec nor the specification appear to be released under any sort of open source license (or anything resembling an open source license).  The terms under which they have been released are in question.
• The actual origin of the codec also appears to be in question.  While it may have come from the efforts of the 3GPP or one or more of its members, under what agreements(s) they were created and what rights have been granted by the authors is not clear.

Even after legal review, OpenLogic was still uncertain as to the origin, ownership and license terms of this project, though legal did confirm that it is not open source. We contacted the project community to request permission to distribute the specification in one customer’s private library on a case-by-case basis and permission was denied.  We informed the customer, which was able to update designs in order to avoid the use of this package.

Cobertura is a free Java tool that calculates the percentage of code accessed by tests. It is based on jcoverage. Some of its main features include:

• Executable from Ant or from the command line.
• Instruments byte code after compilation.
• Generates reports in both HTML and XML.
• Shows the percentage of lines and branches covered for each class, each package, and for the project.
• Shows the McCage cyclomatic code complexity for each class, the average code complexity for each packet, and the average cyclomatic code complexity for the project.
• Provides sorting of HTML results by class name, percentage of lines covered, and more.

Use Cobertura to identify which parts of a Java code base are lacking test coverage.

License Issue

This project is dual licensed under the Apache 1.1 and GPL V2 licenses.

The Ant tasks are licensed under the Apache 1.1 license. Because the Ant tasks are loaded directly into the runtime of Ant, and the GPL is incompatible with all versions of the Apache license, Ant tasks can’t be licensed under the GPL.

The rest of Cobertura is under the GPL because Cobertura is a fork of the GPL version of JCoverage. The terms of the GPL require that forks – or any other project based on a GPL licensed project – also use the GPL license.

Additionally, because use of Cobertura modifies JCoverage code, there are other license implications.

Resolution

We added a special note to the Cobertura package details page in OLEX explaining the situation and pointing users directly to all of the relevant information available on the community website.

gSOAP eases the development of SOAP and XML Web services in C and C++ by performing XML to C/C++ language binding. By providing a transparent SOAP API that leverages strong typing to map XML schemas to C/C++ definitions, it frees users from the burden of WSDL and SOAP details.

Use gSOAP to implement or interact with web services. It is portable across a variety of platforms, and provides compiler tools for a WSDL parser, and a SOAP stub and skeleton compiler. It follows the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0a compliance recommendations, and warns about potential interoperability issues before building a new web service application. This helps to keep users from having to go through another development cycle to make the service compliant. Its supported standards include:

• SOAP 1.2
• SOAP RPC encoding
• SOAP document/literal style
• XML-RPC
• UDDI v2 inquire and publish APIs
• SOAP attachments: MIME, DIME and MTOM
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Discovery
• WS-Security
• SSL/TLS encryption and certificate authentication

License Issue

gSOAP is distributed under several licenses:

• The GNU General Public License
• The gSOAP Public License 1.3, which is based on the Mozilla Public License 1.1
• The gSOAP Commercial License

The community made no clear statements regarding the choice to multi-license the project.  Further, the relationship between the licenses was unclear. Following the OpenLogic certification process, we were able to provide customers with the following guidelines:

• The software is offered under the GPL to enable it to be used with open source projects, and requires all software development to be open-sourced under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license.
• The gSOAP Public License allows commercial and non-commercial use of gSOAP without fees or royalties. It can have products built on top and distributed under any license, including proprietary, as long as a notice of copyright and disclaimer of warranty is in the product’s documentation.
• The gSOAP Commercial License is for use with the wsdl2h WSDL parser, UDDI code, and sample applications which are only licensed under the GPL or the gSOAP Commercial License. Any use of the listed tools or source code for proprietary product development requires the gSOAP Commercial License.

Resolution

Multi-licensed projects are a common source of confusion for users of open source software. In this instance, OpenLogic was able to clarify the intent and obligations of the three unique licensing options.  As a service to our customers and the community at-large, we’ve added an entry to the OLEX knowledge base which explains the licensing of gSOAP in detail.  Perhaps as a result of our input and inquiries, the project has also updated their Web site to explain the license situation more clearly.

The Jacl project provides a self-contained implementation of a Tcl (Tool Command Language) interpreter. It also facilitates communication between Java and Tcl interpreters.

Jacl can be used to add scripting functionality to an existing Java application, or to take advantage of Java methods from Tcl procedures. An alternative to Jacl is Tcl Blend, which provides similar functionality in a Tcl extension.

License Issue

During the certification process for Jacl 1.4.1 in May 2008, OpenLogic discovered that versions of Jacl previous to 1.4 were licensed under a proprietary copyright statement. This statement is included as a text file in the distribution as the “Jacl License”. The project website offered no additional information on the license. Examining the contents of additional distributions, OpenLogic found the copyright statement mentioned on the website and in the original distribution, and researchers also found a Sun license. The Sun license had no name or title, but launched immediately into terms and conditions.

Using text comparison tools, OpenLogic researchers determined this Sun license was not one previously encountered. A close read of the license text revealed the following potentially restrictive clause regarding development: “[use is] expressly subject to Sun’s continuing ownership of the Software”. According to OpenLogic’s definitions, a true open source license contains no restrictions, and thus an evaluation of a license that results in ‘potentially restrictive’ text is reason enough for a project to fail OpenLogic’s certification process. But there were two additional red flags:

1. There are only two OSI-approved Sun open source licenses, and this license was not similar to either.
2. Sun is a commercial entity.

The OpenLogic certification team searched Google with chunks of the license text looking for a match and scoured Sun’s pages, but had no luck turning up the exact license text in any other location. An ordinary project would have failed certification at this point, but OpenLogic determined to take the research a bit further because Jacl 1.4.1 was a specific customer request.

Returning to the distribution, OpenLogic’s researchers scoured the directories for additional clues and found a file that included the following text: “Jacl 1.0 was released by the now defunct SunScript group at Sun Labs. Newer versions of Jacl have been developed by…” and following this text was a list of the project developers. This answered some of the questions about the genesis of the license, and Sun’s history with the project and researchers contacted the project developers.

Discussion with the developers clarified a number of points regarding the relationship between the licenses and, most importantly, OpenLogic was assured that lawyers from Sun, AMD and IBM — all with an interest in the project at various junctures via staff involvement — had reviewed the licensing and found it adequate.

Resolution

Satisfied that the project was indeed open source, OpenLogic kept the copyright notice and added the Sun license under the name Sun Microsystems Laboratories License. This combination was called the Jacl Software License. A note on the Jacl knowledgebase entry within OLEX explains the situation as follows:

“Originally developed by Sun Microsystems in conjunction with developers affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, Jacl uses both the Sun Microsystems Laboratories license, and a copyright, permission statement and warranty disclaimer added by the University. OpenLogic refers to this combination as the ‘Jacl Software License’.”