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I'm using a 3rd party lib in Java which has the LGPL license. E.g. jasperreports (https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/net.sf.jasperreports/jasperreports/6.3.0).

Which license is relevant for me as a consumer of that 3rd party library?

a) the direct license of the 3rd party library or

b) the "most limited" license of one of the 3rd parties dependency?

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Jasper Reports appears to be licensed under the LGPL. They are giving you their project, including anything they've built upon, under that license. This is all you should generally be concerned with.

If there was a more restrictive license (e.g. GPL) used in a component, then this project would be improperly licensed - that is, they can't provide their software under the LGPL. You probably don't need to look into this, unless your company lawyers are particularly distrustful of others' ability to license their software correctly.

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  • Well, I think the OP is asking whether he has to follow the more restrictive licenses of some of those dependencies. Which makes things interesting - many of them are considered "Optional."
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 31, 2016 at 21:56
  • Thank you for the answers. Yes like Zizous212 wrote. I'm kind of concerned which license actually counts. The License of the external library (so in this case jasperResports) or the more restrictive license of a dependency of jasperReports. I would expect it's the one from JasperReports but.. No clue :)
    – Joschi
    Sep 1, 2016 at 6:56
  • You should also be concerned with the full chain of deps of Jasper there. I would upvote if this was clear.
    – Philippe Ombredanne
    Sep 2, 2016 at 8:04
  • You shouldn't have to care about the full chain of dependencies, as that's the project's responsibility. If everyone had to check for every transitive dep, we'd never get any actual work done.
    – Xiong Chiamiov
    Sep 3, 2016 at 22:28

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