[Libreoffice] LibreOffice licensing

[Jesús Corrius]

Hi Michael,

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Michael Meeks <michael.meeks at novell.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2011-06-04 at 08:48 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote:
>> 1. TDF takes OOo under the Apache License and combines it with LO
>> contributions under the LGPL/MPL and licenses the combined work
>> (LibreOffice) under both the LGPL and MPL?
>
>        So if we say MPLv2 and LGPLv3+ - that is fine; and the resulting code
> would be under those (compatible) licenses. Which are copy-left.
>
>> 2. A third party takes OOo under the Apache License and combines it with LO
>> contributions under the MPL and proprietary closed-source code of its own to
>> create a proprietary closed-source product?
>
>        If they have changed the MPL code modules - they need to release those
> changes; otherwise (since the MPL is a weak-copy-left) they can not
> release other changes (like extensions) they bundle - obviously.
>
>> That would not however stop third parties from combining the
>> Apache OpenOffice code with LibreOffice code and doing with that whatever
>> both licenses allowed.
>
>        Sure - one example is IBM, they have a load of MPL code, and even LGPL
> code in Lotus Symphony. Amusingly, IBM are far more pragmatic in
> practise than ASF is - one of the tragic ironies of the situation.
>

I guess it would be useful to create a wiki page with a FAQ about
these license topics :)

-- 
Jesús Corrius <jesus at softcatala.org>
Document Foundation founding member
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Skype: jcorrius | Twitter: @jcorrius