[webkit-dev] WebKit licensing and LGPLv3

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Hi Lars,

On Jul 25, 2007, at 3:47 AM, Lars Knoll wrot
> As a sidenote, since we're already talking about licensing: I don't  
> quite see
> the benefits of having a mix of BSD and LGPL licenses. LGPL is more
> restrictive, so that one applies to the project as a whole anyways.  
> Wouldn't
> it be easier to just have one license (LGPL 2.1 or later) for the  
> complete
> code base?

We mostly put the BSD license on files that were originally developed  
primarily by Apple for two reasons:

1) To still potentially allow reuse of that code in other internal  
Apple projects, even if a non-Apple employee makes a small change to  
that particular file. As code gets mixed between files, there might be  
less and less of such code over time, though.

2) For the WebKit ObjC API code specifically, to avoid subjecting apps  
that link to WebKit only, but not to WebCore or JavaScriptCore  
directly, to the LGPL reverse engineering clause.

As you say, it does not make a huge difference for the project  
overall, so I think we should continue to allow contributors to  
contribute new code under the BSD license.

Regards,
Maciej