[Libreoffice] LibreOffice licensing

[Greg Stein]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 10:59, Rafael Dominguez <venccsralph at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well im no legal expert, but from what i understand of the LGPL/MPL
> licenses, they still are copyleft licenses, you can merge apache code and
> libreoffice code, make your own version if you want, sell it etc, but if you
> make any derivative work, you need to make those changes available to the
> rest, so i dont think its possible to make a closed source office suite with
> libreoffice code under LGPL/MPL.

A third party could do the following:

1. Core [from Apache], licensed under ALv2.
2. Features [from LO], licensed under MPL (you offer a choice, they pick MPL)
3. Proprietary "stuff"

This package can then be sold. If they make modifications to the LO
work, then they must release those changes. The third party is not
obligated to release any changes to the Apache code, nor their
proprietary code.

Note that the LGPL operates similarly. A third party could take LO
"Core" licensed under the LGPL and make releases, alongside
proprietary code. They would need to release changes to the core, but
it would still be possible *today*. The relink requirements under the
LGPL get a bit annoying, but would still be possible.

Cheers,
-g