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TeamMsgExtractor / msg-extractor

Extracts emails and attachments saved in Microsoft Outlook's .msg files
GNU General Public License v3.0
745 stars 172 forks source link

License under Lesser-GPL (L-GPL)? #431

Open michaeljtbrooks opened 1 month ago

michaeljtbrooks commented 1 month ago

Would you be willing to release this under the lesser-GPL license? I'd really like to use it in our electronic medical record software, but we're restricted to using Lesser-GPL or more permissively licensed packages. Our software is a commercial offering, though we're a small company mostly focused on improving patient safety in hospitals, currently break-even.

What happened msg-extractor is currently GPL license only.

What should have happened We would love it if it were Lesser-GPL!

Steps to reproduce

1) View the LICENSE file!

TheElementalOfDestruction commented 1 month ago

Unfortunately, re-licensing the project under L-GPL would, I have been informed, require contacting all of the contributors and getting them to agree to the license change. Due to at least a few of them having no apparent contact details, this would almost certainly be infeasible.

Additionally, I don't truly understand the difference between the two licenses enough to approve the change myself, despite trying to read up on it.

Matthew, the co-owner, suggested that you may still be able to use the module in your project indirectly by doing something to run extract-msg as a service and having your code interact with it through API requests.

I'd be happy to try to work with you on making that happen, if you need it.

juleskuehn commented 1 week ago

As I understand it, the GPL license would allow you to use it through the command line interface using subprocess.run(). However you should not import extract_msg in your codebase.

See https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/283266/can-i-commerically-use-gpl-licensed-software-on-my-server-if-i-am-only-distribut