License

License for the Kawa software

The license for Kawa and the packages it depends on is a "modified Gnu Public License". You can find it in the file COPYING in the Kawa sources, and also quoted here:.

The Java classes (with related files and documentation) in these packages
are copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999  Per Bothner.

These classes are distributed in the hope that they will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

These classes are free software.  You can use and re-distribute a class
without restriction (in source or binary form) as long as you use a
version that has not been modified in any way from a version released
by Per Bothner, Red Hat inc, or the Free Software Foundation.
You may make and distribute a modified version, provided you follow
the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 2,
or (at your option) any later version.

The file COPYING also contains a copy of the GNU General Public License version 2.

People have asked what the Kawa license means in practice. Informally, you get to pick between these choices:

  1. Use Kawa as distributed by Per Bothner, Red Hat Inc, or the Free Software Foundation (or their approved agents), with no modifications. In that case, you can use Kawa for any purpose you like, and distribute your application with any license you like. (This basically gives you the same rights as a typical commercial royalty-free re-distribution license.)
  2. Obey the terms of the standard Gnu Public License. (See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). Informally, this means that if you distribute any application that is based on Kawa, you must also make available to all your recipients (customers) the source code for your entire application, giving them the modification and re-distribution rights they have under the GPL. In a Java context, I take "entire application" to mean all classes (and native code) that run in the same Java virtual machine, except for the Java runtime system itself (the virtual machine, low-level run-time system, and any classes in a java or javax package).
  3. If you need to make a change to Kawa, you can submit them to Per Bothner, and convince him to include them in future Kawa releases.
  4. You can negotiate some other (commercial) license with Per Bothner.

In general, if the license of Kawa or associated packages causes difficulties, let me know.

Kawa uses some math routines from fdlib's libf77, which bear the following copyright:

Copyright 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 by AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bellcore.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that the copyright notice and this permission notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting documentation, and that the names of AT&T Bell Laboratories or Bellcore or any of their entities not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission.

AT&T and Bellcore disclaim all warranties with regard to this software, including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall AT&T or Bellcore be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software.