IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org [LWN.net]

IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org

Posted Jul 15, 2011 20:53 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org by jamesh
Parent article: IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org

But LibreOffice is NOT licenced under the LGPL !!! If you want, you can - !legally! - ignore the (L)GPL entirely!

ALL LibreOffice code (that is, code donated to the LibreOffice project) is licenced MPL. Add the fact that the original code base has been relicenced to Apache by Oracle, and (murkiness aside) you can now legally copy the entire LibreOffice project without using the (L)GPL for as much as one line of code!

The choice of MPL by TDF was apparently deliberate to be friendly to IBM.

Cheers,
Wol

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IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org

Posted Jul 16, 2011 4:32 UTC (Sat) by am (subscriber, #69042) [Link] (2 responses)

MPL? Where?

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/license/

IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org

Posted Jul 16, 2011 14:46 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

That page refers to the binary. And you're correct, the binary is LGPL3 (in fact, given the licencing murkiness now Oracle has donated OOo to Apache, maybe it isn't. Anyways, that WAS true before Oracle changed the licence).

As for MPL, look here ...

http://www.documentfoundation.org/develop/
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/License_Policy

Let's split the LO code base in two - the code that came from OOo, and the code that's been added whether Go-OO or LO.

The OOo code has been relicenced Apache.
The Go-OO/LO code is available under the MPL.

So, it's a fair claim that you can copy all of LO without going near the (L)GPL. To be safe, yes you probably would want to make sure that all the Oracle code had been relicenced as AL2.

Cheers,
Wol

IBM to contribute Symphony to OpenOffice.org

Posted Jul 16, 2011 21:01 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

For those who did not bother following links: yes, LO *is* licensed under LGPLv3 (and also MPL - dual licensed).