[Lazarus] components\aggpas\gpc - non-commercial use only

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 2016-05-17 14:14, Denis Kozlov wrote:
> developer uses an official distribution of IDE, whether it is Lazarus or
> Delphi or other, it is not natural to require developer to check *every
> component or part* for licensing terms

As Mattias said, it's not per component, but per package. So that
reduces the amount of checking significantly.

The other thing is, what you are saying above might work fine for closed
source applications like Delphi, but not for open source projects like
Lazarus. There is no need to limit or place restrictions on bundled
[useful] components. Each project developed by an end-user has different
goals.


> That is why I thought it could be clearer if most of Lazarus/FPC code base
> is under the same licensing schema, while everything that falls outside of
> it could be easily discovered

Placing them in different directories is going to do *nothing* for the
“easily discovered” argument. ‘make ide’ or ‘make bigide’ builds a
predetermined set of components and registers them on the Component
Palette. Lazarus developers tend to simply select and drop a component
on a form. They are not going to check which package that component
comes from, then double check the directory of that unit.

What they are going to do is associate a package dependency with there
project. That doesn’t reveal the directory location though.

The licensing information should be in the “Package Options ->
Description -> License” memo. But sadly, many packages don’t include
that information. So again, it is the developers job to make sure any
components they use have a license that agrees with their project. No
need for the Lazarus Team to police developers.


Getting back to AggPas. If you use the AggPas code as-is from the
"components" directory, there are no licensing restriction for
commercial projects. So there is NO issue by default. You have to
explicitly include the gpc unit somewhere in YOUR code before a license
restriction applies. AggPas functions perfectly well without the gpc
unit, hence it is not referenced anywhere in the standard AggPas units.

Regards,
  Graeme

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/

My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp