Re: "LGPL API" (was: Re: Private company and code salvation)

[Steven Levine]

In <address@hidden>, on 09/29/08
   at 10:14 AM, "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> said:

>On 29-Sep-2008, David Bateman wrote:

>| Acceptance is subject to the degree to which community members believe 
>| the GPL should be the license to all software. However, the harder 
>| question is "how can you have an LGPL, or other license, to a set of 
>| libraries using the GPL?"

>I don't think you can.  Once you link some code licensed under the LGPL
>with some other code licensed under the GPL, you must distribute the
>result under the terms of the GPL.

This is my understanding too.

If the Octave copyright holders care to support it, the sources required
for building the linkable libraries could be released under a dual
license, GPL and LGPL.  This would allow users to link to proprietary
binaries.  The users would be required to distribute the Octave LGPL
sources and the Octave copyright holders would be free it integrate any
useful modifications into the Octave GPL sources.

I have to agree with the others that if the original poster wants to build
a business around proprieatary products, he should be purchase proprietary
products to support this business model.

Someone mentioned NDA protections.  This would work for .m files, but not
for code linked to Octave.  The user would be required to distribute this
code under the terms of the GPL.

Steven

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