JBoss Queries Apache Geronimo Code Similarity

Kanagawa writes "This morning, Jim Jagielski, Exec. V.P. and Secretary of the Apache Software Foundation, announced on the geronimo-dev mailing list that 'the ASF received a letter from JBoss's lawyers regarding... the similarity of code between [J2EE implementation] Geronimo and JBoss.' The letter is available in PDF. According to the letter, similarities were noticed back in July, and haven't been fixed."

Comments

For a rebuttal of the claimed similarities...

[tcopeland]

...see this post to TheServerSide. A lot of these look like common design patterns and standard Java/J2EE naming conventions.

You can also see Jim Jagielski's response to some questions here about this issue. Sounds pretty reasonable.

Re:Any point?

[heathm]

That's exactly the problem. Geronimo is a project of the Apache Software Foundation and as such must be licensed under the ASF license. LGPL code cannont arbitrarily be relicensed.

Common origin?

[shamir_k]

The first example in the letter is
org.jboss.logging.XLevel vs. org.apache.geronimo.core.log.XLevel
Both seem to be copied from log4j's examples.customLevel.XLevel
However, there are much more substantial allegations made here

Re:Even the variable names are the same

[brett_sinclair]

even choices for captialization are the same. for example, "ThreadNDCConverter"

No mystery there. ThreadNDCConverter is capitalized *exactly* according to very established java code conventions. See for example http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConvent ions.doc8.html

They should retract that statement

[butane_bob2003]

The JBoss code and the Apache code both appear to be copied from an example that was originally created by Apache. Exibit A and B are both logging classes, both use Log4J (Apache's logging utility) and can be expected to be similar. Exibit C looks Almost identical, but not entirely. The similarities are so trivial, Apache is bound to make a few quick changes and be done with this thing before it starts. What sillyness.

Re:Both sides seem to be handling it well

[jimjag]

JBoss has noticed similarities and has raised the issue (a second time) with Geronimo.

Minor nit: This is actually the first time this was raised directly. Early on, the ASF was contacted by JBoss simply to "remind" us that JBoss is covered under GPL and that any derived code could not be relicensed (under the Apache License). At the time, no real work on Geronimo had been done so that there was no actual code that could be shown to be similar. The above leaves the impression that the ASF had ignored a previous notice from JBoss, which is certainly not the case.

Comment from J2EE "TheServerSide"

[Jerry]

Posted By: Jim Jagielski on November 10, 2003 @ 03:49 PM in response to Message #101148.
Just a short note: It is, and has always been, the stated baseline of Geronimo that it not contain any (L)GPL code, whether JBoss derived (in legally specified copyright sense) or not. It's not for any political reasons (and I'm glad to see that this is not degrading into such a forum) but simply because of the letter and spirit of the Apache License. It should also be noted that Geronimo itself is an "project in incubation" within the ASF. It is not (yet) a formal, official ASF project (or subproject under one of the other top level ASF projects). If there is any (L)GPL code within Geronimo, or code that is derived from (L)GPL code (in the legal sense), it will be stripped and replaced. That's just the way it is and it's the way the ASF has always operated.

Also, it should be noted that some exhibits referred to are no longer applicable. For example, Geronimo's Invocation class was entirely rewritten from what was noted in the letter. In other cases, the similarities are due to the fact that they are simple (and trivial) extensions. With XLevel, org.apache.log4j.Level is itself extended, which imposes and provides some of the common structure and names. It has also been noted that for PatternParser, the similarities come from the fact that both code bases implement "nested diagnostic contexts" as described by Neil Harrison in "Patterns for Logging Diagnostic Messages", which can be found in the book "Pattern Languages of Program Design 3", published in 1997 by Addison-Wesley (ISBN: 0201310112). Apache Log4J implements this class in org.apache.log4j.NDC. This class describes how it is to be used, including the use of a "distinctive stamp."