LPGL and its usage in another application

[ethan]

Hi there,

latley I was thinking about using a LGPL licensed php class in one commercial product I'm developing and after reading th LGPL license ( [opensource.org...] ) I have some doubts.

The most important thing is that it appears to me that if I do use that piece of software whatever mod I do it must remain as LGPL open source.

Does this mean that the whole application I do work on must be open source?... or just the LGPL class I'm talking about?

thanks all ;)

[BigDave]

Is it a part of a library, or would it be a part of your program?

If it is a library, then the library only is LGPL, but whatever changes that you make must also be LGPL.

If you are placing the code into your program, then your entire program must be LGPL or compatable.

If you make a change to the class, it is a derivative work, and it is still protected by the original author's copyright and license. This applies no matter what license they chose to use.

There are some interesting rules around software copyright and code that is not, in and of itself, executable, such as header files. I suspect that this would all be even more complicated by the fact that php is interpreted instead of compiled.

Another option would be to contact the author, and offer them payment to license it to you under another license.

One more thing, when you say a "commercial product", do you mean that you will be selling to someone else? If you are only using it in house, don't worry about it as the distribution clauses never kick in.

[ethan]

Thanks for all the thoughts BigDave,

when I'm telling "comercial product" I mean a php script that I do pretend to sell to others via the web, so distributing it. And, whenever php is an interpreted scripting language, I can also think to compile the source to protect it.

There are some solutions for that, like the omnipresent Zend encoder, ionPHP encoder, or others free like turk MM cache. So in the event of having the comercial product with source compiled/encrypted, this would also be a problem as it goes versus the open source LGPL policy...

Perhaps the best think I can do is contact with the author as you stated, or do my own class (more time consuming thoug...)

oh, and about the class, that would just be a library the main program would use.

[BigDave]

I think you are correct, the best plan would be to get a commercial license or write your own version.

The rights holder set their "price" to use their work, so you either agree to the terms, or you do your own thing.