[JDEV] libjabber 'port' and licensing

[Andreas Ames]

Hi all,

I'm in the course of, ehm, 'porting' libjabber, or rather parts of the
lib subdirectory from the 1.4.2 server sources to apr (see
http://apr.apache.org). I want to use these as a base for a portable
jabber (client) lib in C.

More precisely, 'porting' means that I dump all the pool, xmlnode
etc. stuff (AFAIK, this is the old libxode) in favour of apr_pool_t,
apr_xml_elem etc. (reason is: I will use apr anyway as a portability
layer for threads, file IO etc and want to avoid two different memory
pool mechanisms etc.).  AFAICT, four files will be 'ported: jid.c,
jpacket.c, jutil.c and perhaps xstream.c.

My only concern is the licensing.  By the use of apr I already have
the apache license there.  The four libjabber files are JOSL or GPL,
if I understand this correctly.  I could imagine that such a libjua
(Jabber Util Apr) could be useful for others, for example as a
building block for a new attempt to mod_jabber (which I won't do,
right now; the 'old' mod_jabber by Jeremie Miller seems to be
stalled).  Therefore, and because I will use libjua in our own
applications, I would really prefer to avoid ten or so different
licenses within this small utility.

So what would it take to relicense the four mentioned files to the
Apache license (I noticed copyrights by Jeremie Miller and Jabber,
Inc.)?  If not possible, or if it's an inappropriately big
bureaucratic afford I will resort to the mod_jabber stuff, although
I think it is much less well tested.

I've seen that Jeremie Miller has put his mod_jabber prototype under
this license and the Apache people seem to be a bit picky about
licenses (at least about the GPL) in their software.

While we are at it, are the apr patches within mod_jabber already
submitted to the apr list?  If not, would you, the relevant people,
mostly Jeremie Miller I think, mind, if I submitted them?  And am I
allowed to submit those xml utilities like get_attr, set_attr (in a
suitable form) from mod_jabber:jpacket.c to apr likewise, if they
want them?


TIA,

Andreas