License under LGPL?

[brennie]

Hi there. I'd like to use this in a project that is MIT licensed, however the GPL prohibits that. Anything that imports GPL'd code must be GPL'd. Would you consider re-licensing this under the LGPL (which does not have this restriction), or multi-licensing under GPL + a less restrictive license?

I understand if not.

Thanks!

[ingolemo]

I do not think that simply typing import lenses requires your project to change license.

In my opinion, you can license your own project under MIT and make use of lenses just fine. The GPL only begins acting when the user installs lenses alongside your code (with pip install your_project, for example), but at that point it is out of your hands and the responsibility of the user.

The GPL only affects your project if your project is actively distributing code from lenses. For example, if you distributed your code together with lenses in some kind of compiled bundle such as you would get with pyinstaller, py2exe, or similar tools. The bundle would fall under GPL and you would need to provide the source code for everything in it, but since you're distributing under MIT you are already doing that.

It is not my intention to force you to use any particular foss license for your own code. I merely want to discourage lenses' use in proprietary software. LGPL is insufficient.

[brennie]

According to the FSF, anything that important (or statically links) is considered a derived work under the GPL and therefore must also be GPL if distributed.

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87446/using-a-gplv3-python-module-will-my-entire-project-have-to-be-gplv3-licensed

Thanks anyway.

[ingolemo]

My point; the combination must be GPL, but that only really matters to you if you are the one doing the combining. With foss python module development, you are often not.

[michalk-1]

Hi @ingolemo , what's the reason for discouraging lenses use in proprietary software?