[Fedora-legal-list] License of Lazarus and fpc (freepascal)

[Joost van der Sluis]

Hi All,

I'm packaging Lazarus, a program written in freepascal (fpc).
(https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=187243)

The libraries of freepascal and Lazarus come with a license they call
'modified LGPL'.

In fact it's just LGPL but since freepascal can't link dynamically like
for example gcc does, the 'exception' of the LGPLG to the GPL that you
may link dynamical to it, become useless in the case of freepascal.

So this 'Modified LGPL' has the addition to the LGPL that you may link
statically. 

This license isn't in the official list of allowed licenses although in
fact it's the LGPL with exception #3 of the FLTK license.
(http://www.fltk.org/COPYING.php)

Code written under the 'modified LGPL' can be freely used in LGPL
projects, but it doesn't work the other way around. In practice this is
never a problem, since almost all LGPL-code written for the freepascal
compiler uses this 'modified LGPL' license, since the LGPL itself is
rather useless in this case.

So far my IANAL explanation of the issue. This is what the official
license text was in the past:

"The source code of the Free Pascal Runtime Libraries and packages are 
distributed under the Library GNU General Public License 
(see the file COPYING) with the following modification:

- object files and libraries linked into an application may be
  distributed without source code."

This is how the developers stated it, but soon some people came up with
all sort of problems. Eventually the text became like this: (Lazarus)

"These files are distributed under the Library GNU General Public
License (see the file COPYING.LGPL) with the following modification:

As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent
modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms
of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent
module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An
independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on
this library. If you modify this library, you may extend this exception
to your version of the library, but you are not obligated to do so. If
you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your
version."


Question is now if this 'modified LGPL' license can be added to the list
of licenses allowed in Fedora.

Regards,

Joost van der Sluis.