Re: Fwd: permission to re-license strbuf subsystem as LGPL

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 23, 2011, 22:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20110923221611.GA2548@elie>
In-Reply-To: <CA+sFfMcmsKkKM7C0g4vKmjmCCNqRHuvz-hwEHAm=+stqnOPpAw@mail.gmail.com>

Brandon Casey wrote:

> Jonathan Nieder suggested using a more permissive license than LGPL.
> BSD seems to have the most support.  If the remaining contributors
> agree, then I'm fine with licensing under BSD.

A few words of clarification. My opinion shouldn't matter much here --- I am more of a bystander and user than a contributor to strbuf. :)

The main reason I suggested a permissive license is that the strbuf lib contains some inline functions and I do not want it to be complicated to use them. To comply with the LGPL, in addition to releasing any changes made to the library, distributors usually do one of a few things:

 a. offer the source code for your work that uses the library in
    addition to any binaries,

 b. use dynamic linking, or

 c. provide object files for your work that uses the library, so it
    can be re-linked against a modified version of the library.

(b) and (c) don't handle inline functions.  Luckily, there is a way out:

 d. only use the inline functions from within a subset of your work
    for which you are willing to provide source.  Dynamically link to
    it or provide object files to allow re-linking.

With that in mind, I have nothing against the use of the LGPL here (and one of the two main authors of the strbuf lib explained a good reason to prefer it over the BSD license). The inline functions in the strbuf lib are pretty small, so the above was probably not too important in the first place.

Thanks, and sorry for the unnecessary noise.

Regards, Jonathan