On Monday 06 March 2006 22:39, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Ok, I will neaten the code and make it available on my server, at
> which point I will post the SVN address to the list.
>
> I don't know all the details regarding the different licenses (GPL,
> LGPL, BSD, etc..). What would be the recommended license to use? I
> still need to use it in our commercial application though.
In that case you definitely want LGPL or BSD2, the big difference between the
two GPL's is that you cannot link a non-gpl program against a GPL'd library.
In terms of what they actually do LGPL and BSD are very similar with one major
difference you can actually include (as in cut-and-paste) bits of a BSD
library into another app or create a derivative library under a different
license, the LGPL does not allow you to do these things but it does allow you
to just link with a proprietary program.
You don't want BSD1, BSD1 has a very annoying subclause that requires any
advertisement in any media of any program/library in any way linked against
or using yours to include a list of every contributor EVER - for some BSD1
libs this later made advertising completely impossible as the contributor
list could easily fill a full page (or three) newspaper add by itself.
So then the question is whether you want to allow people to create derivative
libraries under a different license, if the answer is no then you want LGPL,
if the answer is yes then you want BSD.
The final option you should consider is to use the lazarus license, it is
essentially exactly the same as the LGPL except it allows a few additional
actions regarding static linking (which is needed for the LCL) - and I
presume would be needed to get full use out of your component.
Personally I vote you use the lazarus license as that would allow us to bug
Mattias to include it in the main IDE and there won't be any licensing issues
about it :)
For the record though: you can GPL it and STILL use it in your own proprietory
apps, as the copyright holder, the licenses DO NOT APPLY TO YOU.
There is no legal reason why you cannot
1) Make it GPL'd - so only free software can use
2) Use it in your OWN proprietory software
3) Sell licenses to people who want to use it in other proprietary software,
this is both TrollTech and MySQL's major business models.
Ciao
A.J.
--
"there's nothing as inspirational for a hacker as a cat obscuring a bug
by sitting in front of the monitor" - Boudewijn Rempt
A.J. Venter
Chief Software Architect
OpenLab International
www.getopenlab.com
www.silentcoder.co.za
+27 82 726 5103
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