licensing question for a C++ template library

[simo]

On Sun, 2006-10-22 at 16:48 +0200, Benoît Jacob wrote:

> 1) out of curiosity

IANAL, but the following table is what I'd say.
I collapsed 4th and 5th column because availability of source code
doesn't mean absolutely anything, if you don't have permission to use
it, it is exactly like not having it.
I also changed BSD to X11 which is equivalent but without the
Advertising clause so that there is no ambiguity

> 2) because there's some dual-licensed software (think Qt) and I have nothing
>    against that, so if possible i'd like our library to be usable by such
>    dual-licensed software. I guess that corresponds to the 4th column, not
>    the 5th one, since by definition such software distributes its sources.

Always, under both licenses?

> What's vital for our lib is to be usable by GPL and LGPL software, the rest is 
> optional, but still a plus. All other things equal, we'd prefer a GNU license 
> over BSD or some other very liberal license. So, by filling the above table, 
> you help us making the right choice :-)

+------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|                              | a program or library licensed   |
|                              +-----+--------+--------+---------+
|                              | GPL | LGPL   |  X11   | Non-free|
+------------------+-----------+-----+--------+--------+---------+
| can use a C++    |           |     |        |        |         |
| template library | GPL       | yes | y/n[1] | y/n[1] |    no   |
| licensed under   |           |     |        |        |         |
| the ...          +-----------+-----+--------+--------+---------+
| and still remain |           |     |        |        |         |
| distributable    | LGPL      | yes | yes    | yes    |  yes[2] |
| under its own    |           |     |        |        |         |
| license          +-----------+-----+--------+--------+---------+
|                  |           |     |        |        |         |
|                  | X11       | yes | yes    | yes    |   yes   |
|                  |           |     |        |        |         |
|------------------+-----------+-----+--------+--------+---------+

[1]: you can distribute the program under it's own license but when
combined with the GPL library the whole work need to be released under
the terms of the GPL.

[2]: you must either use the library as a dynamically linked object or
provides at least binary .o files and the build system to recompile the
whole program if the LGPL library is statically compiled in.

hope this helps,
Simo.