It other words, and in laymen terms.If you are using NHibernate, great, you don't have anything to worry about legal wise. If you extending NHibernate, and distributing your work, then the *parts that extend NHibernate*, must also be under the LGPL.
To my knowledge, we had at least one case of a company taking NHibernate (well, they took Active Record, but same thing) and trying to sell it as their own. I don't think it was very successful journey for them, though. On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Fabio Maulo <[email protected]> wrote: > This is an invitation to the team. > The text below is part of the LGPL license adopted by NHibernate > (mentioned as "Library"). > > Please help OSS ensuring that every body does understand the term of the > license. > > 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion > of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and > distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 > above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: > > a) The modified work must itself be a software library. > > b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices > stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. > > c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no > charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. > > d) If a facility in the modified Library refers to a function or a > table of data to be supplied by an application program that uses > the facility, other than as an argument passed when the facility > is invoked, then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that, > in the event an application does not supply such function or > table, the facility still operates, and performs whatever part of > its purpose remains meaningful. > > (For example, a function in a library to compute square roots has > a purpose that is entirely well-defined independent of the > application. Therefore, Subsection 2d requires that any > application-supplied function or table used by this function must > be optional: if the application does not supply it, the square > root function must still compute square roots.) > > These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If > identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Library, > and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in > themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those > sections when you distribute them as separate works. *But when you* > *distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based* > *on the Library, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of* > *this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the* > *entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote* > *it.* > > Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest > your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to > exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or > collective works based on the Library. > > In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Library > with the Library (or with a work based on the Library) on a volume of > a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under > the scope of this License. > > 4. You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or > derivative of it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form > under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany > it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which > must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a > medium customarily used for software interchange. > > If distribution of object code is made by offering access to copy > from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the > source code from the same place satisfies the requirement to > distribute the source code, even though third parties are not > compelled to copy the source along with the object code. > > 9. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not > signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or > distribute the Library or its derivative works. These actions are > prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by > modifying or distributing the Library (or any work based on the > Library), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and > all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying > the Library or works based on it. > > > -- > Fabio Maulo >
