[vtk-developers] Re: Distributing GL2PS as part of VTK.

William A. Hoffman billlist at nycap.rr.com
Mon Oct 20 16:48:01 EDT 2003


Thank you for your offer.  However, I still don't think we can include 
LGPL code in VTK.  We need to have a consistent license in VTK.  Right now,
if you use VTK, you know that all of the code is BSD.  The LGPL license is
a bit too complicated.  For example, even with your exception, code
linked to an LGPL library is not allowed to restrict reverse engineering of
the entire package.  The license may have other "features" as well.  

I would like to point out that GL2PS would benefit from being in VTK.
We have very good testing with many compilers and systems as well as
many users to find/fix bugs.  I don't think that a BSD license would
keep any fixes/changes from getting back to you.  You are of course, free
to use any license you want, just as we are.

-Bill


At 08:11 PM 10/19/2003, Christophe Geuzaine wrote:

>Guys - I don't plan to release GL2PS under a BSD-like license, but I
>would have no problem adding an exception to the LGPL to allow for
>static linking. This would allow VTK users to develop completely
>closed-source software including GL2PS, provided that GL2PS is not modified.
>
>This is the fair (IMHO) compromise adopted by the FLTK folks
>(http://www.fltk.org), which permits to use the library the way you want
>(even for proprietary projects) but still requires people to contribute
>their changes if they want to distribute code based on *modified* versions.
>
>Tell me what you think...
>
>Cheers,
>
>Christophe
>
>-- 
>Christophe A. Geuzaine
>Applied and Computational Mathematics, Caltech
>geuzaine at acm.caltech.edu - http://geuz.org
>
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