Commercial Useage

[Darin Willits]

Hi,

Thanks for your library!  I've been tinkering with it for awhile now and am quite impressed.  

However, now I'd like to use it in a commercial GWT application and I am concerned with the implications of the LGPL licence.  How does the LGPL work in a GWT application where everything is essentially compiled to javascript as a bundle?

In short, is it permissible to use lib-gwt-svg in a commercial GWT application?  Will that require me to release my source?

Thanks,

Darin

[Luke Last]

Any updates on this?

Thanks,

-Luke

[Darin Willits]

Hi, 

I haven't heard anything back on this, could someone please provide some guidance as to whether this library is usable within a commercial app?

Thanks,

Darin

[Lukas Laag]

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The choice of lgplv3 is not made to preclude commercial use, just to
force users to give back to the community if they make changes to the
lib itself.

Lukas

[Darin Willits]

Hi Lukas,

Thanks for getting back to me.  My question is mostly about how the LGPL interacts with a GWT application.  From my reading, since GWT essentially compiles everything into a static bundle including an LGPL library in a commercial one *could* open up the commercial app to needing to release its source.  The LGPL works nicely when you can dynamically link a library into another application, but that isn't really the case here.  This is more of a static linking scenario.

The GWT-EXT project has an explicit clause in their license which allows this use case, so I guess I'm wondering if your library could have something similar?

http://gwt-ext.com/license/

I completely understand wanting to ensure that changes to the library itself are open sourced, but I'm just unclear as to the license implications in this context.

Thanks,

Darin

On Thursday, 20 August 2015 13:12:02 UTC-4, Lukas Laag wrote:

On 08/14/2015 08:23 PM, Darin Willits wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I haven't heard anything back on this, could someone please provide some
> guidance as to whether this library is usable within a commercial app?
>
> Thanks,
> Darin
>
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "lib-gwt-svg" group.
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> <mailto:lib-gwt-svg+unsub...@googlegroups.com>.

[Darin Willits]

Hi Lukas,

Any thoughts on providing an explicit exemption in your license for commercial usage?  I am faced with the unpleasant task of having to pull your library from our project before we go to beta over concerns with the LGPL in a GWT project.  As you likely know the alternatives to your library are less than ideal so I don't really want to do this.

Thanks,

Darin

[Lukas Laag]

Hi Darin,

I agree with your analysis that what the GWT compiler does is static linking. Thus I do not think the formulation made on the  GWT-Ext license page is correct.

Indeed I have re-read the LGPL-V3.0 license carefully and section 4.d mandates that the end-user of the application must have the means to relink the application with modified versions of the library either by recompiling the application and library code (4.d.0) or by linking on the library dynamically (4.d.1). The GWT compiler however does not support dynamic linking (it copies the library code into the application), rendering option 4.d.1 impossible. That would leave only option 4.d.0, which is what closed-source applications like yours want to avoid.

As previously mentionned, I do not particularly want to prevent closed-source applications from using unmodified versions of lib-gwt-svg, I mostly care that they contribute back fixes and improvements if they make some. To solve the problem of closed-source applications, I could grant the following waiver:
"waiver to LGPL-V3.0 for lib-gwt-svg: in order not to preclude using the library in closed-source applications, the authors of lib-gwt-svg do not mandate that applications based on unmodified versions of lib-gwt-svg fulfill obligation 4.d of the LGPL v3.0 license."

Since I am a software developer, I do not know if such a waiver is legally possible and would actually work for a closed-source application. If it suits you however, I will add this mention to the Github project page: https://github.com/laaglu/lib-gwt-svg

Lukas

> <mailto:lib-gwt-svg...@googlegroups.com>.

> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

The choice of lgplv3 is not made to preclude commercial use, just to
force users to give back to the community if they make changes to the
lib itself.

Lukas

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