obligations from using hibernate and OSS in application?

shrndegruv · **Joined:** Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:10 pm **Posts:** 27

Hello

Im developing some software, some of which I am going to give away for free and some of which I am going to (try to) sell.

I was wondering what obligations I have if I used OSS like hibernate, spring, etc in my application? There will be no shrink wrapped stuff, only download.

Can someone clarify what I have to do to keep this thing legal?

thanx

batmat · **Posted:** Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:35 pm

Hibernate is LGPL: Less General Public License, which is a less "strict" license than the GPL. So it can be used without any restrictions in any kind of software.

Read http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html

I'd say the only "limitation" is that if you modify the Hibernate code, so as to add a new feature for example, you must provide it publicly for free, which seems totally fair to me at least ...

shrndegruv · **Joined:** Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:10 pm **Posts:** 27

batmat

thanx for the reply -- I have not had to modify hibernate at all -- I was really wondering if I was obligated to distribute and GPL or LGPL stuff with my application, depending on whether it was free or not. I would certainly share any modifications with the community, if I had needed to make them...;)

batmat · **Posted:** Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:47 pm

batmat wrote:

Hibernate is LGPL: Less General Public License, which is a less "strict" license than the GPL. So it can be used without any restrictions in any kind of software.

:). So yes, you can bundle the hibernate jar in any other app under the license you like.

Slammer · **Joined:** Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:20 am **Posts:** 15

But I do think that you should also take into account the licenses that come with the jars that are in the hibernate/lib dir. You don't have to redistribute them all, but some are required by hibernate and have their own license.

shrndegruv · **Joined:** Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:10 pm **Posts:** 27

good point slammer....