Re: Pango-0.14 released

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Prabhat Hegde <prabhath mpkmail Eng Sun COM> writes:

> hi owen,
> 
> Thanks for the update. I have a question on the license. Could i use
> pango api and modules (either in portions or as a whole) in other
> open-source projects such as mozilla, open-office or any other? Is this 
> info available online somewhere?

Pango is under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The general intent
of the LGPL is that using such a library as a separate entity is possible
no-matter the license of the application.

So, using Pango from a GPL, MPL, or a proprietary closed-source application
is fine.

Code from Pango however, cannot generally be used in other applications
unless they are licensed under the LGPL or GPL. 

So, code from Pango could not be used in OpenOffice without
relicensing, because all code in Mozilla needs to be dual-licensed under
the SISL and the GPL, not just under the GPL.

And code from Pango could not be used in Mozilla without relicensing,
because all code in Mozilla needs to be dual-licensed MPL and GPL, not
just GPL.

For particular code portions, however, relicensing is frequently possible -
it's just a matter of contacting the relevant authors (which I can help
with), and most of the time they are happy to do this. For instance,
Karl Koehler discussed reusing the Arabic-shaping code in Pango with
people from the Mozilla team, though I don't think they actaully
ended up using the code.

The summary is:

 - Using Pango from another project: almost no restrictions, usually fine.

 - Using portions of Pango inside another project: will generally require
   the other project to be GPL or LGPL.

Hope this helps,
                                        Owen