[fpc-devel] LGPL vs BSD

[Florian Klaempfl]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> On 8/4/06, Joost van der Sluis <joost at cnoc.nl> wrote:
>> This difference is exactly what the gpl makes the gpl. If I have
>> developed some code, and give it away for free and some company makes
>> some improvements and start earning money with it. At the same time they
>> could refuse to give me their improvements, so that I'm stuck. They
>> didn't help me to improve my code.. but they can go with my work and
>> make their profit...
>>
>> That's the difference between BSD and the (L)GPL.
> 
> I see your point.  I think of it as how each camp can have leverage
> over the other.
> 
> GPL software needs some type of leverage over commercial software as
> they don't have the financial backing (or whatever else).  They do
> this by forcing everybody else to publish there changes, which helps
> the project along.
> 
> Commercial companies feel they need some leverage over GPL software,
> as they invested a lot of money and man-power into some project to try
> and create a better product the end of the day.  They want some return
> on investment. If they had to publish all change, nobody would bother
> buying their product, as they could just use the GPL (free) one.
> 
> I guess this is what makes the choice of a license so hard!  :-)

I don't think that it's that hard assuming you want to release sources :)
- commercial libraries get a dual license: gpl and proprietary (you can
develop non gpl software if you pay). This works, see e.g. Qt, MySQL etc.
- community projects are GPL or LGPL depending if they are libraries or
programs
- code developed by public funds (academic etc.) gets BSD