Commercial Licenses • Custom license specific to the product • Sometimes allows free use for non-profit organizations • Sometimes allows free use for everyone • Usually prohibits reverse engineering • Usually prohibits redistribution • Rarely includes source code • May include all sorts of bizarre terms GNU / General Public License (GPL) • you are free to do whatever you want with the source code (modify, redistribute, etc.) • But ... any changes you make that you distribute must also be GPL • And ... any code you distribute that uses GPL code must be available under GPL • Defeats "embrace and extend" • Often called "viral" by both friend and foeGNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) • Used to be called "Library GPL" • Non-LGPL code can use it without Becoming LGPL (EG LINKING DURING Compile) • Resulting Combined Executable Is LGPL • Many People Think this Means That You Can Use LGPL Java libraries from non-LGPL code • Not clear whether that interpretation is correct • We are not your lawyers J BSD / Apache Licenses • You can freely use, modify, re-license, etc. as long as you maintain the copyright notices • You can include the code in a Commercial Product without Releaseing your source code • You can Embrace and Extend • Safest for corporate use
