Finding valid license for project utilizing AGPL 3.0 libraries

Question

For a new OSS project, I came across the AGPL 3.0 license ("GNU Affero General Public License 3.0") for the first time, and I'm a little unsettled now as to what license I should (and legally can) choose for my project.

Just for background, my project uses both the iText 7 PDF library (AGPL 3.0), as well as the Flying Saucer iText 5 renderer (itself LGPL 2.1), which internally uses iText 5 (again AGPL 3.0). My project also uses additional libraries licensed under ASL 2.0, EPL 2.0, and BSD 2-clause licenses.

From this question I gather that my project needs to be licensed under AGPL 3.0 because it uses AGPL-3.0-licensed code. However, that seems to be contradicted by the Flying Saucer iText 5 renderer using LGPL 2.1 while also utilizing AGPL-3.0-licensed libraries (unless their choice of license is incorrect/illegal, which I'm not really sure about what consequences that would have for my own project?!). Assuming that (from an AGPL 3.0 compatibility point of view), both AGPL 3.0 and LGPL 2.1 are an option, would either one raise incompatibilities with the ASL-, EPL-, and BSD-licensed libraries that I'm using?

In short, my question is: how do I determine what license options I have for a project that uses libraries licensed under AGPL 3.0, LGPL 2.1, ASL 2.0, EPL 2.0, and BSD 2-clause?

(I don't expect anyone to do my work for me, I'm happy to do the necessary research if someone could just point me towards how I would go about that in the first place)

Answer 1

I'll assume that the FSF is right about linking to a library making a derivative work, and the consequences thereof. This isn't a settled question, and you can find more about it elsewhere on this site, but I'm going to assume it's so.

LGPLv2.1 doesn't impose any requirements on the licence for your code. It has some other requirements, but those would be met by licensing youyr code under AGPLv3. I had some worries about the onward conveyability of the result, but the FSF's compatibility matrix suggests that an LGPLv2 library can be used with GPLv3 code without having to "trapdoor" the library to GPLv3, so I think use with AGPLv3 will be comparably fine.

The BSD2 and Apache2 libraries will be fine.

Your biggest problem is the EPL2 library. According to the compatibility list, EPL2 code is only compatible with GPLv3 code if the EPL licensor offers the option of a secondary licence, and includes GPLv3 under that option; otherwise, they say, the licences are incompatible. So as I read it, unless you're really lucky, and the EPL2 licensor has designated AGPLv3 as a permissible secondary licence, you can't use that library as you propose.

You might try approaching the library's athor(s) and asking if they will so designate AGPLv3. You might well strike gold; EPL is a copyleft licence, so their aims are already likely to be aligned with yours. Otherwise, I fear you may need to do without that library.

Answer 2

MadHatter's answer pointed you to a roadblock in your project, based on license compatibility, or rather incompatibility, between EPL2 and AGPL.

There are options you can consider to overcome this 'situation' by removing a) the AGPL-licensed code or b) its copyleft implications.

1. You could avoid the AGPL license of iText by choosing their commercial license program.
2. You could try to replace the AGPL-licensed code by other code with a more permissive license. One thing that comes to mind is Apache PDFBox, but there might be other libraries that better fit your purpose and requirements.
3. You could use a PDF-library, which is accessible through a command line interface or another loosely coupled connection, which will ensure that this code and your other code are considered an 'Aggregate'. In this case, independent of the license of the PDF library, the code of the rest of your project would not be impacted by any copyleft implications of the license of the PDF library. Such command-line tools might have to be installed independently from the other app, Ghostscript is a typical example for this category of software, available for some platforms.