[Mesa-users] License issue

[Brian Paul]

Vlad Stamate wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> My company is looking at using Mesa3D (linking against the library) as
> a viable software OpenGL-like library (as a software rasteriser) for
> rendering instead of using GDI directly (we are targeting the Windows
> platform only). I have a few questions about the licensing part of
> Mesa3D. According to the website the core Mesa is covered under a MIT
> license but the drivers are all licensed individually. Looking in the
> gdi folder only one file has a license mentioned at the top: wgl.c.
> The other files in the folder lack that. While I can infer that LGPL
> is being used, our legal department wants more evidence.
> 
> So, my questions are:
> 
> a) What is the license for the gdi driver: LGPL, MIT or something else?

IIRC, the GDI driver is LGPL.  I don't recall the name of the original 
author of the code.


> b) If we are only planning to link against and use Mesa3D as a library
> on Windows PCs, do we need other components than core and the gdi
> driver?

I think that's it, but I'm not a Windows developer.


> A pointer to where I can find more information about this would be good too.

Note that there's a second implementation of WGL based on Gallium (the 
new Mesa driver infrastructure).  The code is in 
src/gallium/state_trackers/wgl/ and is entirely MIT licensed.  See the 
docs/install.html file for build instructions.

-Brian