LGPL (was RE: [Biojava-l] Restriction digest progress)

[Kalle Näslund]

Brian Osborne wrote:

>Mat,
>
>I did read the licenses themselves, I believe I understand them, somewhat.
>What I don't understand is the idea that Biojava is distributed under the
>LGPL so that it's not under the LGPL. Is this what the Biojava authors
>actually want to say? It looks like a typo. Is there a third kind of GPL
>license?
>
>But to answer your answer one of your questions, we here at Cognia have
>contributed to Biojava and we're all happy to do so, including the business
>people (and I help with Bioperl myself). What's not as clear is the reverse
>case, meaning what happens if we incorporate Biojava code into our products.
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Brian O.
>
>  
>
If your "product"s source code dont contain any source code from 
biojava, and the "product" only makes
 use of the biojava API ( in other words, your "product" only needs to 
access the .jar files containing
the biojava bytecode ). Then you  should be able to licence your 
"product" under whatever licence you see fit.

If you make some changes to the biojava soure code, Those changes must 
be made publicly available with
source.

That is the difference between GPL and LGPL, GPL demands that all 
software that uses
GPL software, must be GPL, that means that if you link your code with a 
GPL library,
your code need to be GPL aswell. LGPL does not require code you link to 
the LGPL
code to be LGPL or GPL.

<disclaimer> I am not a solicitor, so this is just how i understand 
things, and is not neccesarily the truth </disclaimer>

mvh Kalle