[kwlug-disc] Switch license or keep it the same?

[Hubert Chathi]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:33:56 -0400, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> said:

> Licenses are so weird.  In the C/C++ context, I thought that linking
> to a GPLed library means your code has to be GPL as well.

Not necessarily.  It just means that your code has to be licensed under
a GPL-compatible license.  Basically, it means that the combined program
(your code plus all libraries) has to be distributable under the GPL,
but individual pieces (either your code, or any libraries) can still be
other under different licenses as long as they are GPL-compatible.

> That is (I thought) why the LGPL exists -- so that a program that is
> not GPLed can link to a library that is without having to be GPL
> itself.

The LGPL is to allow code that is GPL-incompatible (such as proprietary
software) to use the library.

[...]

> It is not even clear to me why I couldn't distribute the source to
> pyshorteners.c along with my source. Isn't that how distributions ship
> collections of both GPL and non-GPL code?

The GPL distinguishes between distributing things that are meant to be
used together, and "mere aggregation" (which is the term used in the GPL
v2 -- GPL v3 uses the term "aggregate").  In a distribution, the
software is largely independent, and so can be considered an aggregate.
But if you distribute the source to pyshorteners.c along with your
source with the intention that your source uses pyshorteners.c, then
that would likely be a different story.

(I am not a lawyer)