Developers, We (the core team) are planning to relicense Racket and its standard libraries under a permissive license (MIT and Apache v2). Since Racket contains contributions from hundreds of people, we need permission from people who have contributed. If you've contributed code or documentation to Racket at any point, we would like to get your permission. You can do that by replying to me by email, or at this GitHub issue: https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570
# Why switch from the LGPL? First, making Racket available under a more permissive license will allow Racket to be used in more contexts and by more people -- one of our most important goals. In particular, some organizations cannot use GPL-variant licenses, including the LGPL as used by Racket. Second, the LGPL is tricky to apply to Racket. The Racket compiler combines the program and the standard library via cross-module inlining, as well as inserting the results of macro expansion into the resulting compiled output. This makes it unclear if the entire resulting program is a derived work of the standard library. Also, the mechanisms for linking in Racket can make shipping Racket executables that comply with the license difficult, as described in the license page [1]. Third, the LGPL version 2 which we use does not provide patent protection, and the LGPL v3 which does has other issues. # What license are we switching to? We plan to switch to dual-license under the Apache License, version 2 [2] and the MIT license [3]. The MIT license is extremely permissive and compatible with almost everything, while the Apache license has patent protection and is compatible with other software already distributed under the Apache license. This is also the combination chosen by the Rust project. # When will this change happen? In the near term, we only plan to release the Racket code under a different license. Because the C code is linked with multiple existing libraries that are licensed under the LGPL (such as Lightning and GMP), the C code in Racket will continue to be distributed under the LGPL v2. However, we plan to make this change eventually for all code, so we are asking for _all_ past and future contributions to be licensed under the new pair of licenses. I hope to complete the process for the Racket code in the next two release cycles (six months). # How are you collecting permission? Either via email to me ([email protected]) or at this GitHub issue: https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570 Please tell me any names and any email addresses that you may have contributed to Racket (or PLT Scheme) under. # What if I don't agree? We hope that everyone will agree, but we can't be sure of it, nor can we guarantee that we will be able to contact everyone. For people who do not respond to direct contact, we will treat that as agreement in most cases. If you explicitly do not agree, we will try to work something out so that the re-licensing can go forward while respecting your copyright. # What if I think we should do something different? Please, let us know. We are not lawyers, and we're happy to hear suggestions for other ways we can accomplish the goals mentioned above. Sam, with Matthew, Robby, Matthias, Jay, Vincent [1] https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html [2] https://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0 [3] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/CAK%3DHD%2BZd7mT8qMe%3DEoaa5d4_AAhN6RZzzRwdk-1KkVu3o0qHJg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
