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Date:      Wed, 16 Apr 2003 09:23:26 -0400
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
To:        Socketd <db@traceroute.dk>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: License questions
Message-ID:  <3E9D594E.2050205@potentialtech.com>
In-Reply-To: <20030416145014.26715310.db@traceroute.dk>
References:  <20030416145014.26715310.db@traceroute.dk>

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I am not a lawyer.  If you're running a business you should seek professional
legal advice.  Here's my opinion/experience, however.

Socketd wrote:
> I would like to use FreeBSD to make commercial and free software. For that
 > I use a number of programs and third-party libraries (I program in C++). My
 > guess it that there is no problem with using antuja, gnome, c++ doc and other
 > programs for this, but what about the libraries? Some of them are released
 > under the BSD license, but other under GPL or LGPL.
> My question is, can I use libraries like dbconnect, common c++, gtkzthread
 > (which are all under the GPL or LGPL) to make closed-source, commercial
 > software?

Maybe.  You can do it with LGPL, but not with GPL.  Not being able to _every_
create closed-source software from GPLed stuff is a fundamental precept of
the GPL.

> Also, if I want to release software under the BSD license, does the license
 > have to be included in every file I write?

I'm not sure, but it should would be safer that way (no chance of "I didn't
get the license with this distro")  I think you should at least put in a
notification that the software is distributed under the BSD license.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com



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