Licensing of DIrivative works

[Phillip Kelly]

Hello Hans,

What type of licensing do you have for softwares produced with 4tH?

Thanks

Phillip K.

[The Beez]

Hi!

Good question! First, 4tH is a compiler - so whatever you produce with it (compilants, sources)  is fair game. Which means: do whatever you want. Sell it, give out copies for free - there is no licensing involved there. Your original programs - that's yours. No question about it.

On the other hand, you can't have a 4tH program without a runtime, which is (mostly) comprised in the function exec_4th.c

That one underlies the LGPL v3 license. As long as you use it verbatim (which is: as you found it in the package I provided) you have no issues. Sell it, give out copies for free - there is no licensing involved there.

However, if you make ANY CHANGES to the 4tH functions like exec_4th.c, comp_4th.c, dump_4th.c, etc. you're obliged to publish this changed source code.

Usually, the user in question submits such changed source code to me, I pick out the stuff that I think is interesting for a larger audience and we part our ways. I usually have no problem - even when 4tH is used in commercial projects. It's been done before. The consequence is you can now enjoy include files and sleeping applets because that user in particular submitted his changes to me ;-) And that's basically the general idea - if you find it useful, submit improvements to me so everybody can benefit.

So in short, you can do whatever you want with anything in the 4tH package - unless you change it. Then I want to see which improvements you made.

Hans Bezemer