[Lazarus] Ide add-ons licensing issue

[Martin]

All info from memory: double check yourself.

Also, I am no lawyer, and the info below is my opinion (my understanding 
of the licensing situation)

On 23/02/2013 15:50, Giuliano Colla wrote:
> It's my company policy to provide our customers the source code of the 
> applications, with a licensing condition which specify that the source 
> code is provided only for customer convenience and reference.
>
> In some special cases, the customer can make small himself 
> modifications, with our authorization, and the license is modified 
> accordingly.
> In those cases the customer is also informed of the Lazarus and fpc 
> version used for the original compilation, to avoid any compatibility 
> problem.
>
> It's clear to me that our source code carries our license, while 
> Lazarus and fpc come with GPL license.
Actually:

LCL, RTL, FCL, LazUtils : LGPL + Linknig exception

IDE: GPL

Packages: various (e.g. SynEdit: MPL or GPL)

>
> But what if we have some packages, which are not only run-time, but 
> also design-time, and which we must deploy in order to make our 
> customer able to recompile the program?
>
> They're not of general interest, so it doesn't make sense to 
> contribute them to the Lazarus community (with one of them I tried, 
> but it was rejected, as too specific). They're just in our hands, and 
> they must be added to Lazarus IDE just for our applications.
>
> Common sense tells me that they should GPL'd too, but I'd like to be 
> comforted by a knowledgeable opinion.

Depends on what  your package depends on.

Most packages that integrate into the IDE use IdeIntf (and LCL, FCL ,ect).

IdeIntf is also LGPL.

If so, your package can be any license you like.

At least if you distribute it stand alone

However if you BUNDLE it with the IDE it may differ, because then it 
becomes part of a bundle containing GPL stuff.