I am looking for some advice on licenses. Here is my situation: Over the last couple years, I have developed a rather large number of fire department analysis functions. I am in the process of trying to publish some packages to make these functions available to the public. I am trying to release two packages that essentially define S4 classes for common types of fire department data. Then, I would like to publish a package that essentially reads in these fire department data types and returns analysis results. My concern is that I may eventually want to build and sell some proprietary functions and I am trying not to box myself out of this future option. It is my understanding that if I use the GPL license, all work based on my packages would have to take on the GPL license (effectively making it impossible to sell software). It looks like the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) may suit my needs by allowing me to make public my current work without eliminating the possibility of future proprietary work. I have a couple questions I am hoping somebody can answer.
- It says that "libraries" licensed under a LGPL can be used by proprietary software. What is meant by libraries? Are class definitions and functions considered libraries? - If I use the LGPL for all my packages, do I maintain the right to build and sell software that is based on these LGPL packages? For instance, could I use the class definitions from a LGPL package as inputs for analysis in a piece of proprietary software? - Other than potentially allowing competitors to also use my LGPL packages in their proprietary software, are there any big disadvantages to using a LGPL? - If somebody improves on my LGPL S4 class definitions, can I still then use them in a proprietary package despite their being modified? I am a big supporter of the open source community and have personally benefitted greately from open source software. My intentions are to release my work as open source, but just don't want to be boxed out of future proprietary developments. These licenses can be pretty confusing, so I appreciate any information that can help me figure this out. Thanks, Markus [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.