OSGPL vs LGPL

[Trajce Nikolov NICK]

Hi Community,

I am not a licensing expert but curious how these two are compared for closed applications using LGPL or OSGPL.. Any hints?

Thanks a bunch as always!

Cheers,

Nick

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trajce nikolov nick

[Robert Osfield]

Hi Nick,

On Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 12:56, Trajce Nikolov NICK <trajce.ni...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am not a licensing expert but curious how these two are compared for closed applications using LGPL or OSGPL.. Any hints?

OSGPL is a relaxed version of the LGPL, using the WxWidget relaxation terms that are added LGPL.  The basic idea of the relaxation is to allow static linking/embedding of applications that use the OSG.  

With LGPL you need to use a shared library and make it possible for end users of your application to be able to swap in their own versions of the LGPL'd libs. This would typically make it incompatible with use in a turn key IG, or a static linked application.  

 

[Robert Osfield]

I should add, to avoid any possible ambiguities I chose the MIT license for the VulkanSceneGraph project.

It's not possible to change the OSG license to anything more permissive than the OSGPL as all the contributions to it have been under the OSGPL.  To change the license you'd need to get permission from all the contributors which is essentially impossible at this point as there are many hundreds of contributors with no means of tracking them all down.

OSGPL should be sufficient for commercial applications - it's been used for 20 years in commercial applications without any legal issues so use it now shouldn't introduce any issues.

Cheers,

Robert.

[Trajce Nikolov NICK]

Thanks Robert.

> OSGPL should be sufficient for commercial applications - it's been used for 20 years in commercial applications without any legal issues so use it now shouldn't introduce any issues.

Is it the same with LGPL?

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[Robert Osfield]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 15:14, Trajce Nikolov NICK <trajce.ni...@gmail.com> wrote:

> OSGPL should be sufficient for commercial applications - it's been used for 20 years in commercial applications without any legal issues so use it now shouldn't introduce any issues.

Is it the same with LGPL?

I just explained the differences between OSGPL and LGPL,  they aren't the same, the OSGPL is more permissive in ways that can be important to commercial applications wanting to embed the libs and not make them available to user change.

The LGPL is used widely, and I am not familiar with legal cases where companies not complying with LGPL was an issue, perhaps others know of some.

 

[Trajce Nikolov NICK]

Thanks again Robert. I also did some research and asked around so I think I am fine.

Cheers,

Nick

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[Daniel Trstenjak]

Hi Robert,

> With LGPL you need to use a shared library and make it possible for end users of your application to be able to swap in
> their own versions of the LGPL'd libs.

I don't think this is quite correct. You have to ensure that a user can
use a newer version of the OSG with your application. But you can use a
static linked version of OSG if you provide an object file of your
application with which the user can link the newer OSG version, creating
a new binary of the application by himself.

Greetings,
Daniel