Re: [Fxruby-users] Licensing question - I can make money, right?

[Lyle J. <ly...@kn...>]

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Let me preface my response to Rich by saying that I try to avoid 
discussions of licensing issues as much as possible. In an ideal world, 
people would just do the right thing, and give credit where credit is 
due. And I am sure that Rich is one of those people. But it is a 
necessary evil for me to choose a particular license (in this case, the 
Lesser GPL) for FXRuby because people don't always do the right thing. 
Having said all of that, my intent is for people to grant as much 
freedom as possible for people to use FXRuby to develop useful software 
applications, commercial or otherwise.

On Feb 1, 2004, at 10:39 AM, Rich wrote:

> I've looked into the FXRuby license (LGPL) and the FOX license 
> (modified
> LGPL).

OK. For reference to others reading this, copies of those licenses can 
be found on-line here:

	http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html

and here:

	http://www.fox-toolkit.org/license.html

> Other than that - a program using FXRuby would have the OpenGL file
> included, which has no license for software developers...

If your FXRuby-based program makes use of the Ruby/OpenGL extension 
(which is something separate from FXRuby), you would need to confirm 
its license obligations with the author of that extension. I can't 
confirm that it has "no license for software developers". Furthermore, 
since Ruby/OpenGL is useless if not linked to some underlying OpenGL 
library, the license for that library may come into play as well.

> ... so - those are all of the licenses - right?

Don't forget about the licenses for any supporting libraries, such as 
those for PNG and JPEG image support, if your code requires them.

> If I understand the LGPL correctly, I can use LGPL'd work in my 
> standalone
> EXE and not have to license my work under LGPL at all.

According to my understanding of the definitions in section zero of the 
LGPL, a standalone executable program that incorporates LGPL'd code is 
a "work based on the library" and is subject to the terms of the LGPL. 
That doesn't mean that you have to license *your* work under the LGPL, 
but it does introduce some obligations on your part. Those obligations 
are discussed in section 6 of the LGPL.

This in contrast to a "work that uses the library" (described in 
section 5 of the LGPL). An executable that doesn't "stand alone", but 
needs some LGPL'd library to be installed to work, appears to fall into 
this category and is not subject to the terms of the LGPL.

> I can close the source for all of my work - right?

Yes, that's how I read it (see for example point 6a of the LGPL).

> I know that the modified version of the LGPL for FOX says that I need 
> to
> include the sentence
>
> "This software uses the FOX Toolkit Library 
> (http://www.fox-toolkit.org)."
> and that if I do that I can statically link to an unmodified version 
> of the
> FOX library...
>
> ... now if FOX had to do that to allow users to bundle their library, 
> why
> didn't FXRuby need to do the same?

The relationship between FXRuby and FOX (in terms of licensing) is that 
FXRuby is "a work based on the library" and not "a work that uses the 
library", where "the library" in question is FOX. That is to say, 
FXRuby doesn't contain any of the FOX source code, but does depend on 
its presence to actually work.

Now, technically, the precompiled versions of FXRuby for Windows are 
statically linked with an unmodified version of FOX, and so those 
should somehow incorporate the statement described in part 2(c) of the 
FOX license addendum. I don't know that I'm explicitly doing so and, if 
not, I will correct that ASAP.

> Thanks in advance for any opinions / insights / facts that I can get 
> as a
> response, and thanks for letting me ramble a bit on this question, I'm 
> new
> to the LGPL.

Thanks for asking, and please let me know if you have more specific 
questions about you can and can't do with FOX and FXRuby. [I am Cc'ing 
Jeroen on this in case I've made any misstatements about FOX's 
license.] We are both pretty reasonable guys, and neither of us wants 
to do anything to intentionally restrict the widespread adoption of FOX 
and FXRuby, blah blah blah.

Lyle
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