07.07.10, 17:16, "Peter Murray-Rust" <[email protected]>: > I am writing to ask guidance from anyone expert in LGPL and dual licensing. > Take hypothetically that I have written a piece of code PMRCODE which is > contributed > to a large project BASE which uses the LGPL licence, the whole of which can > be used > as a library LIB. As a result I decide to use the same licence (LGPL) for > PMRBASE. > > A company COMP wishes to use LIB in its products in a statically linked > manner > and asserts that this is not possible with LGPL code. COMP therefore wishes > LIB to be > relicensed under a less restrictive licence (e.g. BSD or MIT) or > alternatively > to dual licence the code. As PMRCODE is part of LIB, this would require me, > as author, > to relicence PMRCODE under the same changed licence strategy. > > COMP's argument is that although the LGPL does > allow for inclusion into commercial closed source projects you either have to > distribute the LGPL'd portion as a dynamically linked library > which the end user could replace if desired or a API-based rebuild system. > This may > apparently have undesirable commercial consequences for COMP. > > I would appreciate clarification of these issues - I appreciate they are > complex. I > assumed that the LGPL was a reasonable licence system to use and indeed it's > widespread > in the BlueObelisk. However although I'm quite happy for companies to use > and resell > my software - that's part of the OpenSource philosophy - I am not so sure I > should change my licence because it is a better business model for a > downstream commercial > exploiter. > > But I have an open mind and don't want to be obstructive but would like to > know the arguments. > > P. > > > -- > Peter Murray-Rust > Reader in Molecular Informatics > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry > University of Cambridge > CB2 1EW, UK > +44-1223-763069
Hi Peter, I don't understand completely what are you asking about. There may be several kinds of question, e.g. 1) May you relicense PMRCODE? - yes, it's your copyright, you may do whatever you want 2) Is it possible to relicense LIB? - yes, if all contributors agree 3) Should you do any relicensing? - if dynamic linking is not an option (I'm in doubt why it could not be), you need to do it. But you have more ways than just relicense to BSD or MIT or something similar. You may add exception to LGPL to permit static linking. You may sell commercial license to COMP. Any of these actions requires agreement from all contributors of relicensed code Did I guess you problem right? -- Regards, Konstantin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first _______________________________________________ Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss
