[geos-devel] Boost License compatibility

[Paul Ramsey]

FSF says they are compatible.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/

P

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:
>
> Mateusz Loskot <mateusz at loskot.net> writes:
>
>> Folks,
>>
>> "mloskot, You Are Not A Lawyer!"
>
> IANAL either; TINLA.
>
>> However, I'm trying to understand compatibility of the terms of LGPL
>> and Boost License [1].
>
> Typically when people talk about compatibility of licenses, they are asking:
>
>  If I combine work A under license LA with work B under license LB to
>  form C, can I distribute C at all?
>
> (For example, original BSD and GPL are incompatible, because the original
> BSD license requires acknowledgement in supporting materials and the GPL
> forbids adding that condition.  So combined works can't be distributed
> at all.)
>
> I think you're asking a different question that adds a condition.
>
>  (bind A to GEOS, B to Boost)
>  can I distribute C under LB?
>
>> I'm looking for someone who would be able to confirm if
>> it i (or not) forbidden to copy/rewrite/port parts/solutions/algorithms
>> from source of GEOS to a source licensed under the terms of Boost License.
>
> I would say that sure, you can copy (because the LGPL only imposes
> constraints on distributing), but then you have to follow the LGPL's
> distribution terms.  This would mean that the combined work would have
> to be licensed under the LPGL (or pure GPL - I'm not quite clear on this
> point).  The Boost license 1.0 looks like the "MIT license", "X11
> License", or "modified BSD license".
>
>> Here is a short comparison of Boost License and LGPL [2] and I'm worried
>> that Boost's requirement of:
>>
>> "Must grant permission to copy, use and modify the software for any use
>> (commercial and non-commercial) for no fee. "
>>
>> forbids such activity (copying).
>
> That was a requirement of the working group that came up with the
> license.  That language does not appear in the actual license, so
> there's no need to follow it.  "Commercial" is am imprecise word, but it
> seems clear the boost people mean "provide binaries without sources" by
> that.
>
> It's pretty clear the boost people would reject including LPGL code in
> boost, if that's what you are asking.
>
>
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