Bug#721072: libjson-java contains non free elements from json.org

Emmanuel Bourg ebourg at apache.org
Tue Aug 27 16:37:28 UTC 2013


Package: libjson-java
Version: 2.3-2
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 2.2.1

JSON-lib, packaged as libjson-java, contains some elements from
the json.org Java API which is distributed under the non free
"shall be used for Good, not Evil" license.

The JSONString interface from libjson-java [1] is identical to the one
from json.org [2] but includes an additional Apache License header.
The Javadoc comments in JSONArray and JSONObject are also copied verbatim
from json.org.

It's not clear if JSON-lib is derived from the json.org implementation
or if the authors started from scratch and copied only the Javadoc.


[1] http://sources.debian.net/src/libjson-java/2.3-2/net/sf/json/JSONString.java
[2] https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-java/blob/master/JSONString.java



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