Hi,

I know there has been numerous threads about different licenses. I've got 1.5 years of archived mails and searched through all of them and read all related threads on the subject, yet I still have some questions.

Some product background:
I work for Master Maths, which is in the franchising businuess. I work at the head office creating their software that is being used by the franchisees. We do not sell our software to the public or to the franchisees. We give them (franchisees) the software and unlock it for a year. After that they simply need to phone user, we verify who they are and unlock it for another yet. So it continues...

I thought the above is important, because I know with some licenses there are references to when you sell software, which technically we do not do. I think we rather fall under the category of in-house software.

We use the following tools & libraries to create our software:

FPC (mostly Modified LGPL)
fpGUI (Modified LGPL like FPC's RTL)
Lazarus IDE (usage simply as an editor)
FBLib (LGPL 1.2)
tiOPF (MPL 1.1)

My concern is the last two. We use Lazarus as our IDE, but we do not use the LCL and do not use the design time componens (click and drop components on a form style coding), not sure if this is of relevance. We do use the Lazarus Packages (*.lpk) to reference the different libraries we use.

#1
FBLib uses the standard LGPL. We link that software directly into our executables. We don't use it as an external (dynamically linked) .so/.dll library. FBLib is pretty much a wrapper for the Firebird libfbclient.so library. If this poses an issue, it should be fairly easy for us to switch to a different library like sqldb included with FPC.

#2
I know MPL is not GPL compatible, but we are not creating GPL'ed software. We are creating software used in-house for our franchisees. We do not sell our software either. So would this be a concern for us? I'm part of the core developers for tiOPF and am pretty sure that if we need to change tiOPF's license to a Modified LGPL or dual license it, it should be possible. Again, we link tiOPF directly into our executable. Does this pose any issues for us?

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

If it's plain LGPL and you link it statically, then you have to supply all object files of the rest of your program to your customers (when they ask for it; and you have to inform them of this right they have, by including a copy of the LGPL with your software and referring to it in your licence agreement), so they can relink your application with a newer version of that library should they wish to do so.

#2 I know MPL is not GPL compatible, but we are not creating GPL'ed software. We are creating software used in-house for our franchisees. We do not sell our software either. So would this be a concern for us?

The GPL and (L)GPL only talk about distributing software. Whether you sell it, give it away for free, rent it out or ask for a postcard in exchange is irrelevant.

I'm part of the core developers for tiOPF and am pretty sure that if we need to change tiOPF's license to a Modified LGPL or dual license it, it should be possible. Again, we link tiOPF directly into our executable. Does this pose any issues for us?

MPL is not (modified) LGPL compatible either, so you need a dual license.

Jonas

Hmm. Where did you get that? Do you btw understand the nature of the MPL<->(L)GPL incompability?

Here's an explanation: http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/docs/mozgpl.html

(Most of) the arguments there apply equally to the LGPL as they do to the GPL. Mozilla.org also explains this: http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html#why-relicensing

Jonas

2008/6/18 Jonas Maebe :

Thanks Jonas for you reply... We sent emails to the relevant authors of the libraries we use to rectify any licensing issues.

Just a minor question regarding the Modified LGPL license used by FPC and Lazarus.

Below I quoted the Modified LGPL...

"As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library."

This part I understand and relates to static linking...

" If you modify this library, you may extend this exception to your version of the library, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this
exception statement from your version."

This part I don't quite understand... Could somebody explain this please?

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

It means that you are free to relicense a file back to the regular LGPL if it was originally distributed under our modified LGPL.

Jonas

2008/6/18 Jonas Maebe :

It means that you are free to relicense a file back to the regular LGPL if it was originally distributed under our modified LGPL.

Only back to the regular LGPL, or to any other license of choice? I presume only to the regular LGPL, otherwise it will be like having no license at all (or a BSD style license).

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

That's what I said, no?

It simply says that you can again remove the static linking exception that we added to the LGPL.

Jonas

2008/6/18 Jonas Maebe :

It simply says that you can again remove the static linking exception that we added to the LGPL.

Perfect! Thank you very much for your time...

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/