licence TaChart question

[cpalx]

The licence of Tachart is LGPL, that means that if i want to sell by software using that component i cannot do it?

[Leledumbo]

FPC's RTL, FCL and Lazarus' LCL are all licensed under modified LGPL (LGPL with static linking) as well. You are allowed to sell proprietary softwares created with them. In your Lazarus folder, there should be COPYING.LGPL.txt and COPYING.modifiedLGPL.txt which contains the license. Please read them to ensure yourself.

[Ask]

In any case, all versions of GPL and LGPL do allow selling.
They only require to distribute the source code together with the product.

In LGPL, this requirement is lessened to only the library source.

[cpalx]

thanks

[MISV]

Sorry for bumping this, but I need to be 100% sure.:

Is TAChart under the same license as rest of Lazarus? From the help page it states that it is LGPL which means it is not covered by Lazarus? It is hard to say for sure given the wording:

TAChart is the principal component of a TeeChart-like charting framework for Lazarus offered under an LGPL licence

If not under the sameLazarus license, that would mean compiling in TAChart code (and not calling it from a .dll) would acutally break the license for a closed-source application?

Originally I had only intended to thank+mention+link Lazarus project itself in a credits file (also visible hrough he program about box) because I though all included in the Lazarus download was part of Lazarus so to speak

[ChrisF]

If you look in the source code directory ($lazarusdir$\components\tachart):

-the readme.txt file indicates a "LGPL component", but

-all the source code files have this header:

Code: [Select]

*****************************************************************************
  See the file COPYING.modifiedLGPL.txt, included in this distribution,
  for details about the license.
 *****************************************************************************

  Authors: Alexander Klenin

So, I'd said that it's clear for me that TaChart has exactly the same license as the rest of the "general" LCL : modifiedLGPL.txt

Which means that you can use it in any kind of programs: open or closed source, free or commercial.

But, if you modify the TaChart source code, and if you release your program publicly (i.e. not for yourself of for your company only), you must also release your modifications publicly, under the same license.

**Addition** The (main ?) package tachartlazaruspkg.lpk indicates also a modifiedLGPL license.

The readme.txt file (i.e. 2008) and the wiki documentation are probably outdated.

.

[BigChimp]

Looks likes it's worth posting a bug report so the maintainers can fix this and avoid confusion...

[ChrisF]

I do agree; at least for the readme.txt file (wiki is only additional informations, without anything 'contractual').

But I guess that only the main coder -Alexander S. Klenin- can fix this.  And it seems its last intervention in the bugtracker concerning the TAChart part was one year ago (2013-09-24).

[BigChimp]

Yes, but IIRC user wp also commits fixes.

[wp]

I have not heard of Alexander here for more than a year. Since he's the main developer of TAChart I would not dare to change anything related to copyright. Does anybody know how he can be contacted? Or can some one of the main Lazaraus developers take care of this issue? In my opinion, all parts of the main product (Lazarus) should have the same licence.

[BigChimp]

Sorry, no idea on how to get in touch with Alexander.

In my opinion, all parts of the main product (Lazarus) should have the same licence.

Yes, that would be nice. However, changing the license (assuming there wasn't a "cosmetic" mistake where some parts erroneously claim a different license than other parts as is perhaps the case with TAChart) of code where multiple people have contributed means getting permission from all those people.

Additionally, there already are differences in licensing on purpose: the IDE is GPL-licensed and the LCL is licensed under modified LGPL (+as a courtesy whatever other licenses individual initial contributing programmers may have used).

More info at http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Licensing

[bigeno]

http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=8269

Vincent received permission, should be LGPL with linking clause

[ChrisF]

Anyway, what would be the signification of an LCL component under a "pure" LGPL license ?

I mean, AFAIK there is no way to produce an external dynamic library (.dll, .so ...) directly from the standard packages released by the author(s) of these components. You can only link them statically with your program, as the rest of the LCL.

So, a LGPL license would implicate here necessarily a GPL one de facto.

For the LCL components, GPL, modified LGPL and MPL (more or less a modified LGPL, for most of the developer concerns) licenses have a sens: the "pure" LGPL has not  from the author/releaser point of view, IMHO.

Just my 2 cents...