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

[jeroen <je...@fo...>]

On Sunday 01 February 2004 02:49 pm, Lyle Johnson wrote:
> 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.

Yes, you could say it is a work BASED on the Library if it CONTAINS a
piece of the Library.

> 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.

If you just dynamically link to it, it becomes a work USING the Library.


The FOX Addendum to the Lesser GPL license tries to smooth over this
somewhat artificial linking-technology distinction.

What we really want to accomplish in the FOX License Addendum is to
ensure that the community may benefits from any improvements that
may have been made to the FOX library itself [hence the UNMODIFIED
clause].


> > 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.

FXRuby is licensed under LGPL; FOX has a slightly more relaxed license
than FXRuby (see LICENSE_ADDENDUM), but that does not help you in case
you need both FXRuby and FOX, in terms of simplifying the logistics of 
distributing your application:- you would have to ship the FXRuby library
as DLL or shared library, even though you could link statically against
FOX.


> 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.

He'd still be subject to the usual Lesser GPL which pertains to FXRuby.

Now, please see Lesser GPL point (6) as to distributing libraries covered
under Lesser GPL.  

> > 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.

Everything you said about FOX's License addendum appears correct; to rephrase
it in my own words:

	1) The FOX License addendum allows static linking against UNMODIFIED
	   version of FOX Library.


	2) But subject to advertising clause.  This is because its harder 
	   to determine what was linked in so you need to tell the user.

	   It to some degree protects you against LGPL purists because
	   the LGPL purists may be able to discover that you have NOT
	   violated the more relaxed FOX license, even though you may
	   have statically linked.


	3) If (1) and (2) are not acceptable or can not be met, then we 
	   revert to Lesser GPL.  The only time I expect anyone to use
	   this option is if you for some reason have to heavily modify
	   the FOX library (i.e. beyond makefiles and such).  

  	   In this case we insist on Lesser GPL so we can potentially 
	   feed such improvements back into the original distribution.


Please contact me for any further questions.



		- Jeroen





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| Copyright (C) 23:50 12/11/2003 Jeroen van der Zijp.   All Rights Reserved. |
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