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Experience with LGPL dependencies? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Glitterkoe@lemmy.world to c/opensource@programming.dev

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Short version of a past post: I'm considering to license my startup's software under the LGPL license, which mostly concerns our "applied science" libraries. Does anybody have perspectives worth sharing on the usage/reception/dependency on LGPL libraries from a personal or company perspective? How often would it still be "blacklisted" like the GPL sometimes is?

Amongst other things the libraries do include tooling for a domain specific language (parser, compiler, language server). The reasoning would be that we would like to lower the barrier to integration of the methods and libraries versus GPL, but don't want proprietary (language) flavors popping up instead of open-sourced contributions somewhere. It might also somewhat prohibit larger parties from "overtaking" the project into something proprietary entirely.

Side note: our low-level elemental libraries are mostly MIT/Apache because these things aren't our core business and are mostly filling gaps where standard implementations are missing.

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[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If you plan on making money off of your software, dual license AGPL and commercial. True open source developers can benefit from your work for free and contribute, while clients that would rather not have GPL can pay you.

The reason for AGPL is to prevent people taking your GPL code, changing it, hosting it as SaaS, and never disclosing their changes as technically they’re not distributing the software.

Also, your non core business libraries are the most prime candidates for GPL/AGPL. You want to benefit from community contributions to those, not bear the full cost of development and give it away for free without getting anything in return.

[–] Glitterkoe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hmm, I don't know of many widespread (programming) languages with an AGPL-alike license, but would love to see examples! Wouldn't a language have a better chance of adoption with an easy to integrate licensed library?

As for some full featured visualization and analysis applications that accept the language's data format: those might be a good fit for AGPL as they generate valuable insights.

With non-core stuff I meant a tiny wrapper around some 2D data or some color palette management. I'm fine with MIT/Apache there and would consider LGPL to keep the landscape simpler.

[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 2 points 23 hours ago

Put it this way: when you use GIMP to create a picture, your picture doesn’t have to be GPL. The image you created is your creation, you decide what license, if any, it’ll have. What the GPL demand is that if you make a change to the GIMP code and share that improved version, you have to do so as GPL.

Likewise, people using your language to create their stuff are free to license whatever they create how they please. They do need to share their improvements to your tools as GPL though.

So perhaps the best option for you is to license the runtime for your language (and some basic libraries) as LGPL so people can link to them with their creations. And everything else that isn’t meant to be linked with the user program at runtime can be licensed as GPL.