[Ecls-list] License of ECL

[Juan Jose Garcia Ripoll]

Dear all,

I am having now some thoughts about the license with which ECL is being 
distributed. Basically, the copyright file is confusing, because it sums 
both a BSD and a GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL) for the same 
distribution. However, due to the more restrictive nature of the later, 
ECL can be considered as a LGPL development environment.

As far as I understand, LGPL is ok for propietary projects, because one 
only needs to distribute the source code and the changes that you made 
to ECL, while keeping your own code free from license issues (as far as 
it does not change or extend the functionality provided by ECL).

Am I wrong? I personally would prefer a BSD style license, but at the 
moment I took over making EcoLisp into ECL, I had to use whatever 
license it came with it (and to me it seemed better than the GPL under 
which CLISP is being distributed).

What do users think about this issue? Is anybody being "scared away" 
from using ECL because of the LGPL?

Best regards,

Juanjo

-- 
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Quantenoptik	+49/(0)89/32905-345
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Garching b. Muenchen, Germany		Juan.Ripoll at mpq.mpg.de