Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. (But, as others have mentioned, the answer is yes.)
In the subject of your subject, you mention “an open source Racket package,” but in the body of your email, you talk about “an open source Racket project.” If you are genuinely talking about a Racket package (in the `raco pkg` sense, distributed as source code), then you are likely not distributing Racket, in which case you are not restricted by Racket’s license at all. You are free to license your package however you want, commercially or otherwise. You’re only bound to the terms of Racket’s license if you redistribute Racket itself. If you are instead talking about a Racket application, distributed bundled with a Racket runtime or any Racket libraries (such as a bundle created with `raco distribute`), then you are beholden to the terms of the Racket license. You are likely required by the terms of the LGPL to make your application’s source files available to your users, as Racket’s ubiquitous use of macros generally precludes replacing library dependencies without recompiling their dependents. However, that does not force you to license your source files under the LGPL, only make them available under your commercial, proprietary license. Distributing a closed-source, non-LGPL Racket application without violating Racket’s licensing terms is likely to be very difficult or impossible, pending the still-ongoing MIT + Apache 2 relicensing effort. But you already said your project is open source, anyway, so that doesn’t matter for you. Alexis P.S. I think the interpretation of the LGPL given in the page you linked is wrong, as it seems to assume that access to your bytecode files is sufficient to relink your application against modified versions of Racket. In the presence of macros (and, to a lesser extent, cross-module inlining), this is very often not true. However, there is scant legal precedent for the interpretation of the LGPL, so ultimately it’s hard to guess what a court would find convincing. > On Aug 23, 2019, at 08:24, Sage Gerard <s...@sagegerard.com> wrote: > > --I believe this email was lost due to me not being subscribed to the list > last time I sent it. Sorry if this is a duplicate. > > Has someone tried to release an open source Racket project under a license > that enforces paid commercial use of that project? Light Googling suggests > this would be antithetical to the LGPL if not open source in general, but > https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html > <https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html> says "the Racket license does > not restrict you at all." > > I understand no replies here or any web page constitutes legal advice, so > please take my question in the spirit of respecting the LGPL's sublicensing > restrictions and learning what other people are doing to earn money > independently using Racket. > > ~slg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/8A9E4341-78EC-4ECD-B9E1-15197CEABEA8%40gmail.com.
