What is the relationship between the mongose networking library (licensed under GPL or commercial) and mongose-os (apache2 or commercial). Does mongose-os include the mongose networking library, or would they be considered separately in a product that uses mongose-os?
It’s complicated. The two are tightly intertwined, mongoose-os can’t be used without the mongoose networking library, it’s a necessary, hard-coded dependancy (last I looked, at least). OS is Apache licensed and the networking lib GPL/commercial. As the two licenses are incompatible they are stuck together with non-open glue code, and and distributed in binary only form via the mongoose-os-libs repository.
This mongoose-networking binary is distributed under an Apache license (as opposed to its source minus the connector, which is GPL licensed) I’m not sure what consequences the Apache license has when applied to binaries. I assume this would allow reverse engineering as this would comprise a derivative work (?)
Take the above with a grain of salt, please. All the moving parts are cloaked behind thick smoke of library-repositories and automagical tooling that make it very hard to ascertain what’s going on. All of the questions I’ve asked concerning licenses went unanswered, unfortunately. To me, this makes the claim that mongoose os is entirely open source somewhat irrelevant as it’s unusable without intentionally opaque dependancies that’s only available in binary form, albeit with an Apache license.