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LGPL

GNU Lesser General Public License – Choosing to license a library under the GPL or the LGPL

The former name of “GNU Library General Public License” gave some people the impression that the FSF endorsed that libraries use the LGPL and that programs use the GPL. In February 1999, GNU Project leader Richard Stallman wrote the essay Why you shouldn’t use the Lesser GPL for your next library explaining that the LGPL has not been deprecated, but that one should not necessarily use the LGPL for all libraries:

GNU Lesser General Public License – Choosing to license a library under the GPL or the LGPL

Indeed, Stallman and the FSF sometimes advocate licenses even less restrictive than the LGPL as a matter of strategy. A prominent example was Stallman’s endorsement of the use of a BSD-style license by the Vorbis project for use in its libraries.

GNU Lesser General Public License – LGPL regarding class inheritance

Some concern has risen about the suitability of object-oriented classes in LGPL’d software being inherited by non-(L)GPL code. Clarification is given on the official GNU website:

GNU Lesser General Public License – LGPL regarding class inheritance

The LGPL contains no special provisions for inheritance, because none are needed. Inheritance creates derivative works in the same way as traditional linking, and the LGPL permits this type of derivative work in the same way as it permits ordinary function calls.

GNU Lesser General Public License – LGPL regarding class inheritance

The heavy restrictions of this permit can hinder development or make a usage of LGPL parts in certain systems impossible.

LGPL

Dynamic-link library|DLL), so that there is a clear separation between the proprietary parts and open source LGPL parts.

LGPL

The LGPL was thus developed as a compromise between the strong copyleft of the GNU General Public License|GNU General Public License or GPL and Permissive free software licence|permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License. The word Lesser in the title of the license is used to show that the LGPL cannot guarantee end user’s complete freedom in the use of software. It only guarantees the freedom of modification for the LGPL-parts, but not for any proprietary software-parts.

LGPL

The GNU Library General Public License (as the LGPL was originally named) was first published in 1991, and adopted the version number 2 for parity with GPL version 2. The LGPL was revised in minor ways in the 2.1 point release, published in 1999, when it was renamed the GNU Lesser General Public License to reflect the FSF’s position that not all libraries should use it. Version 3 of the LGPL was published in 2007 as a list of additional permissions applied to GPL version 3.

LGPL

The LGPL is primarily used for Library (computer science)|software libraries, although it is also used by some stand-alone applications.

LGPL – Differences from the GPL

The following is an excerpt of paragraph 5 of the LGPL version 2.1:

LGPL – Differences from the GPL

Essentially, if it is a work that uses the library, then it must be possible for the software to be linked with a newer version of the LGPL-covered program

LGPL – Differences from the GPL

One feature of the LGPL is that one can convert any LGPLed piece of software into a GPLed piece of software (section 3 of the license). This feature allows for direct reuse of LGPLed code in GPLed libraries and applications.

LGPL – Compatibility

A work under GPLv2 or any later version can be combined with LGPL version 3 library, and the license combination will result in GPLv3 for the combined work as a whole.[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#gpl-compat-matrix Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation]

LGPL – Choosing to license a library under the GPL or the LGPL

The former name of GNU Library General Public License gave some people the impression that the FSF endorsed that libraries use the LGPL and that programs use the GPL. In February 1999, GNU Project leader Richard Stallman wrote the essay Why you shouldn’t use the Lesser GPL for your next library explaining that the LGPL has not been deprecation|deprecated, but that one should not necessarily use the LGPL for all libraries:

LGPL – Choosing to license a library under the GPL or the LGPL

Indeed, Stallman and the FSF sometimes advocate licenses even less restrictive than the LGPL as a matter of strategy. A prominent example was Stallman’s endorsement of the use of a BSD license|BSD-style license by the Vorbis project for use in its libraries.Stallman, Richard. [http://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3 Re: [open-source] [Fwd: [icecast-dev] Xiph.org announces Vorbis Beta 4 and the Xiph.org]

LGPL – Programming languages specificity

The license uses terminology which is mainly intended for applications written in the C (programming language)|C programming language or its family. Franz Inc. published its own preamble to the license to clarify terminology in the Lisp (programming language)|Lisp context. LGPL with this preamble is sometimes referred as LLGPL.[http://opensource.franz.com/preamble.html Preamble to the Gnu Lesser General Public License]

LGPL – LGPL regarding class inheritance

:The LGPL contains no special provisions for inheritance, because none are needed. Inheritance creates derivative works in the same way as traditional linking, and the LGPL permits this type of derivative work in the same way as it permits ordinary function calls.Turner, David. [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html The LGPL and Java]. GNU official website.

Common Desktop Environment – GNU LGPL

In 2006, a petition was created asking The Open Group to release the source code for CDE and Motif under a free license. On August 6, 2012, CDE was open-sourced under the GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPL free software license.

Common Desktop Environment – GNU LGPL

Its source code is available at SourceForge. On October 23, 2012, the Motif widget toolkit was released under the GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPL v2.1 as well, making CDE a completely free and open source desktop environment.

Open Software License – Comparison with the LGPL/GPL

The OSL is intended to be similar to the LGPL. Note that the definition of Derivative Works in the OSL does not cover linking to OSL software/libraries so software that merely links to OSL software is not subject to the OSL license.

Lesser General Public License – LGPL for libraries

The former name GNU Library General Public License gave some the impression that the FSF recommended software libraries use the LGPL and that programs use the GPL. In February 1999, GNU Project leader Richard Stallman wrote the essay Why you shouldn’t use the Lesser GPL for your next library explaining that the LGPL had not been deprecation|deprecated, but that one should not necessarily use the LGPL for all libraries:

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