LGPL (was RE: [Biojava-l] Restriction digest progress)

[Brian Osborne]

Kalle, Keith, and Mat,

Thanks very much, your comments have been very helpful.

Brian O.


-----Original Message-----
From: Kalle Naslund [mailto:kalle.naslund@genpat.uu.se]
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 12:46 PM
To: Brian Osborne
Cc: biojava-l@biojava.org
Subject: Re: LGPL (was RE: [Biojava-l] Restriction digest progress)

Brian Osborne wrote:

>Mat,
>
>I did read the licenses themselves, I believe I understand them, somewhat.
>What I don't understand is the idea that Biojava is distributed under the
>LGPL so that it's not under the LGPL. Is this what the Biojava authors
>actually want to say? It looks like a typo. Is there a third kind of GPL
>license?
>
>But to answer your answer one of your questions, we here at Cognia have
>contributed to Biojava and we're all happy to do so, including the business
>people (and I help with Bioperl myself). What's not as clear is the reverse
>case, meaning what happens if we incorporate Biojava code into our
products.
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Brian O.
>
>
>
If your "product"s source code dont contain any source code from
biojava, and the "product" only makes
 use of the biojava API ( in other words, your "product" only needs to
access the .jar files containing
the biojava bytecode ). Then you  should be able to licence your
"product" under whatever licence you see fit.

If you make some changes to the biojava soure code, Those changes must
be made publicly available with
source.

That is the difference between GPL and LGPL, GPL demands that all
software that uses
GPL software, must be GPL, that means that if you link your code with a
GPL library,
your code need to be GPL aswell. LGPL does not require code you link to
the LGPL
code to be LGPL or GPL.

<disclaimer> I am not a solicitor, so this is just how i understand
things, and is not neccesarily the truth </disclaimer>

mvh Kalle