7 Jul 2010 15:16
Concerns about restrictions imposed by LGPL
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
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
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