Permission to use Nhibernate in commercial product?

ovidius · **Posted:** Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:34 pm

Hi this is the first part of the LGPL license:

Quote:

Hibernate is Free Software.
The LGPL license is sufficiently flexible to allow the use of Hibernate in both open source and commercial projects. The LGPL guarantees that Hibernate and any modifications made to Hibernate will stay open source, protecting our and your work. Anyone who wanted to release Hibernate under a different license would have to obtain permission from hundreds of people who have contributed code to Hibernate, which would be impractical.....
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So, since the first row say that the license is flexible to allow the use of Nhibernate (or Hibernate) in both open source and commercial project, the last 3 rows says that requires a permission to hundreds of people is impratical...

I'm asking, is there any way to use Nhibernate in commercial product?
If yes, how to obtain permission?

if not....i'm going to cry.....(-;

nayato · **Joined:** Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:26 am **Posts:** 5

ovidius wrote:

Hi this is the first part of the LGPL license:

Quote:

Hibernate is Free Software.
The LGPL license is sufficiently flexible to allow the use of Hibernate in both open source and commercial projects. The LGPL guarantees that Hibernate and any modifications made to Hibernate will stay open source, protecting our and your work. Anyone who wanted to release Hibernate under a different license would have to obtain permission from hundreds of people who have contributed code to Hibernate, which would be impractical.....
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This means that you can't sell Hibernate itself. If it is contributed with your commercial software you have to make a reference that the part of your soft is under LGPL and give a link to nhibernate.org.
This comment is for those who'd like to update hibernate and sell it as his own.
That's how I understand it :)

ovidius · **Posted:** Tue Jul 11, 2006 4:57 pm

Ok. if so, it's OK.
Could the official staff confirm this.?

Thanks for your answer nayato.

max · **Posted:** Wed Jul 12, 2006 1:33 am

That is not the LGPL, it is LGPL faq found at http://hibernate.org/356.html

And please read it *completely* and your question is answerd.

scarnie · **Joined:** Thu Jun 29, 2006 12:32 pm **Posts:** 22

So, it can be used in a commercial product, which you can charge for, but you cannot charge anything in relation to NHibernate itself. In addition, any changes you make to NHibernate must be open-sourced, and either contributed back to the community to the base product or full source provided for the modified version - therefore allowing the community to integrate your changes.

You must also make reference in your documentation to NHibernate, and any additional LGPL'd components and where to get them.

I also interpret that any LGPLd components in your commercial app must be recompilable by the customer or consumer and redeployable with that commercial application.

I did read the complete LGPL and extracted all this information from the legalese.

max wrote:

That is not the LGPL, it is LGPL faq found at http://hibernate.org/356.html

And please read it *completely* and your question is answerd.

max · **Posted:** Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:39 am

"I also interpret that any LGPLd components in your commercial app must be recompilable by the customer or consumer and redeployable with that commercial application."

remember you don't need to provide source or actually recompile in if the lgpl'ed component is modularized out as a library (e.g. a dll or jar)

and lgpl does not say you should provide support to a user modified library, just that your customer is allowed to actually replace it if they so choose.

but IANAL, so if you are not satisfied with the comments contact JBoss and they will help you :)