Unclear license situation

[cz-dev-ge]

Hi there,
I noticed that COPYING.txt and the license file in the nuget package contain both GPL and LGPL. Is it and OR or AND relation between them for this project? Or: can I chose which one to use or do both apply to different parts of the software?

Best regards.

[atifaziz]

It is LGPL. The GPL is included because the LGPL is a set of additional permissions on top of the former; thus makes references to the GPL. You need both to understand the LGPL.

[cz-dev-ge]

Thanks for your explanation.

[cz-dev-ge]

You could consider putting only the LGPL into LICENSE.txt and putting GPL into a LICENSE_GPLv3.txt. That way GitHub automatically tags this repo as LGPL. Best regards.

[bilbothebaggins]

I got here 2024 because I was similarly confused (or rather, our license scanner got confused) by the situation.
(I see that the FSF itself lists such a combined document on https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl+gpl-3.0.txt - not helpful IMHO.)

A README clarification or some such would really help.

The nuget package only contains the license file and no source code - it is even unclearer in that context!

For Nuget, you could consider switching to a license expression instead of a license file ref - in that case, it would at least be clear from the nuget side.

Cheers.

[jwfx]

Pretty much ran into the same problem.

I would also welcome the use of a license expression for the NuGet package.

@atifaziz
Just in case you are not already aware: A number of LGPL related expressions have been deprecated (see https://spdx.org/licenses/ bottom of the page). So picking one that is still supported would probably make sense.

[atifaziz]

@bilbothebaggins, @jwfx I hear you. Tracking this in issue #86.

[atifaziz]

This should now be addressed with release 1.3.1. The nuget.org page for the release now clearly indicates the license:

[jwfx]

Looks good, thanks for the quick reaction. 👍