As Mazz said, and I will re-iterate, we are not lawyers. This is NOT legal advice :-)
If you follow this advice, and it all goes horribly wrong, you can't blame us :-)
That said, here goes. Other's on the list, please correct my errors/omissions....
So first off its perfectly possible to use RHQ as part of a *commercial* product.
That's exactly what Red Hat does with JBoss ON:
http://www.redhat.com/products/jbossenterprisemiddleware/operations-network/
But what you're really asking about is using RHQ as part of a *closed source*
product.
This is where the distinction which mazz draws between the GPL and LGPL is important.
If your product *alters* any of RHQ's LGPL/GPL code (e.g. tweaks to the ui), or
*links* (e.g. imports in .java) to any of the RHQ GPL code, then when you distribute your
product you will need to also distribute that source under the GPL or LGPL as
appropriate.
But, if your product just links to the RHQ LGPL code (e.g you are writing a plugin to
manage/monitor something) then there is no requirement to release your code, when you
distribute your product. For example there are ISVs that build their closed source apps
and distribute them on top of JBoss (which is LGPL), similarly we've worked with
partners to develop plugins for RHQ which are not open source.
Thanks
Charles
----- Original Message -----
On Wed, 2012-02-01 at 10:54 +0530, Prashant Shewale wrote:
> I would like to ask if we can use RHQ framework as base
> for
> commercial project. I would like to design management software for
> our
> enterprise software using RHQ as a base. I know RHQ is licensed as
> GPL
> and so its difficult to sell closed source product. Can you please
> provide me some guidelines?
I would guess that virtually all, if not all, of the people on this
list
are not lawyers, including me. Therefore, any advice you get here, I
would not pay attention too :) ESPECIALLY if you plan on marketing a
commercial project, I wouldn't rely on the accuracy of the opinions
you
might get here.
I can give you the following facts, however. In general, the RHQ
Server
is GPL licensed, the core RHQ Agent wrapper (e.g. AgentMain.java) is
GPL
licensed but the internal, pluggable plugin container (and all of its
internals and the plugins themselves) are LGPL licensed.
The plugin container and plugins are licensed with LGPL to allow
commercial or third party offerings to embed the management agent
functionality (which we call the plugin container) in other Java
application runtimes to perform management/monitoring functionality
for
you. We did this, for example, for the old JBossAS 5 management web
console (called Embedded Jopr) - and JBossAS 5 is LGPL (which is one
reason why we gave the plugin container the same license).
You are free to run write your own plugins, obviously, and plug them
into an out-of-box RHQ environment. That's clear. You are also free
to
embedd the plugin container itself into your own Java application
(due
to the LGPL license) such as was already done in another LGPL
project:
JBossAS 5.
If you need more specific information, we'd have to have our lawyers
talk to your lawyers :)
John "IANAL" Mazz
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