[MarkLogic Dev General] Question about licensing and XCC/.NET

[Ian Small]

> > As such, it can be used to run, create and distribute a 
> large class of applications and applets. When GNU Classpath 
> is used unmodified as the core class library for a virtual 
> machine, compiler for the java language, or for a program 
> written in the java programming language it does not affect 
> the licensing for distributing those programs directly.
> >
> > So, I'm no lawyer, but I think you're OK.
> 
> I understand all of that, but I suspect that our legal 
> department would still consider linking w/ this assembly as 
> "contamination" (they actually call it that).  Even if they 
> do approve our use of it, they would take (given past 
> experiences) 6 to 9 months to give us the thumbs up.  Because 
> of their slowness, my director is very leery of OSS.  Can you 
> recommend an alternative interface that would avoid the need 
> to link against GNU Classpath?

The Java XCC interface does not use GNU Classpath.  On .Net, there is no
other path currently available.

The Classpath exception is *very* well known in the industry, and as a
result GNU classpath is used extensively by many software vendors.  It
even merits its own wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classpath_exception

I understand, however, that notwithstanding your actual legal rights
with respect to this, you may essentially be being held hostage by your
own internal processes.  I would recommend that you may want to pursue
this conversation with our support team (if you are an existing customer
- sorry for not recognizing you :-) ) or with our sales team (if you are
considering a purchase) so that they could help you examine other
possibilities through discussion with Mark Logic's product management
and/or engineering teams.

Cheers
ian