hello reinout, hello discussion list (whom i ask to intervene if i'm mistaken in my explanations),
A few weeks ago you posted a helpful comment on the Epiphany mailinglist about Free software licenses.
I was hoping you could do the same for this discussion I'm currently involved in: http://www.nabble.com/Calling-all-translators---UrlValidator-translation-tf4...
what i can say for sure is that from a GNU (gettext) point of view, it is definitely ok for apache licensed software (in fact, for every software) to *use* gettext -- that's what the LGPL is intended for.
it is definitely not a GPLv3 issue either: the GPLv3 was, among other things, designed to allow merging of Apache licensed code with GPL'd code resulting in a new GPL project, not vice versa. (the "or later" clause would be safe to use, but does not help you in that case.)
i am not familiar with the apache proceedings, but from what i read in the thread, wicket is an apache project, and thus, the apache foundation might place arbitrary limitations on what they are allowed to include.
[1] clearly states that LGPL is not ok for them. in my opinion (and, i guess, also the opinion of the GNU people; see the GNU statement on LGPL and java [2]), they misinterpret the LGPL, but i can't help it. (it might be required that a LGPL'd jar wrapper is created around gettext, which i assume to already have happened, but apache people seem to still refuse inclusion.)
i suggest you look for an existing java-style framework that does for java what gettext does for c and python, as i don't assume the apache position will change any time soon. considering the size of the apache java code base, i bet there is already an existing framework you can plug into.
hth chrysn
[1] http://wiki.apache.org/jakarta/Using_LGPL%27d_code [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html