[omniORB] OmniOrb and OmniThread licensing

[Duncan Grisby]

On Wednesday 6 March, "Mark D. Spiteri" wrote:

[...]
> GPL and LGPL? We believe they are incompatible, so this is odd. Can we
> interpret this as LGPL for the libraries we link against? We understand
> however that this would still require us to distribute complete sources
> and (realistically) precludes us from static linking against it.

Others have already answered this pretty much, but I thought I should
clarify.

The omniORB libraries are LGPL. The tools and applications -- omniidl,
omniNames, omniMapper, nameclt, catior, etc. -- are GPL. The output
from omniidl is not restricted in any way.

Under the terms of the LGPL, you must provide the source to omniORB,
either as part of your application distribution, or available on
demand. Realistically, nobody is ever going to demand it from you.
You must either dynamically link with the libraries, or provide object
files for the user to re-link statically. Again, this only has to be
on demand, rather than as part of the distribution. Realistically,
nobody is going to ask for you to do that.

The main actual restriction is that you must clearly state that you
use omniORB in any copyright notices you display.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --