Hi All,
I'm packaging Lazarus, a program written in freepascal (fpc). (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=187243)
The libraries of freepascal and Lazarus come with a license they call 'modified LGPL'.
In fact it's just LGPL but since freepascal can't link dynamically like for example gcc does, the 'exception' of the LGPLG to the GPL that you may link dynamical to it, become useless in the case of freepascal.
So this 'Modified LGPL' has the addition to the LGPL that you may link statically.
This license isn't in the official list of allowed licenses although in fact it's the LGPL with exception #3 of the FLTK license. (http://www.fltk.org/COPYING.php)
Code written under the 'modified LGPL' can be freely used in LGPL projects, but it doesn't work the other way around. In practice this is never a problem, since almost all LGPL-code written for the freepascal compiler uses this 'modified LGPL' license, since the LGPL itself is rather useless in this case.
So far my IANAL explanation of the issue. This is what the official license text was in the past:
"The source code of the Free Pascal Runtime Libraries and packages are distributed under the Library GNU General Public License (see the file COPYING) with the following modification:
- object files and libraries linked into an application may be distributed without source code."
This is how the developers stated it, but soon some people came up with all sort of problems. Eventually the text became like this: (Lazarus)
"These files are distributed under the Library GNU General Public License (see the file COPYING.LGPL) with the following modification:
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. 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."
Question is now if this 'modified LGPL' license can be added to the list of licenses allowed in Fedora.
Regards,
Joost van der Sluis.
On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 11:10 +0100, Joost van der Sluis wrote:
Eventually the text became like this: (Lazarus)
"These files are distributed under the Library GNU General Public License (see the file COPYING.LGPL) with the following modification:
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. 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 is known as the GNU Classpath exception. It is ok for Fedora, although, I usually only see it with the GPL as opposed to the LGPL, since the LGPL has additional relinking requirements that aren't directly superceded by this exception.
Use: # GNU Classpath style exception, see LICENSE License: LGPLv2+ with exceptions
(with the correct LGPL base versioning and correct file to LICENSE text, of course).
~spot
-
Joost van der Sluis -
Tom Callaway