[Lazarus] Source file license

[Martin Frb]

On 15/12/2021 12:53, Juha Manninen via lazarus wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 12:57 PM Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis via lazarus 
> <lazarus at lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
>
>     what licenses are accepted by the Lazarus project ?
>        MIT ? GPL v2 ? GPL v3 ?
>
>
> The Lazarus IDE itself is GPL v2. Most packages are LGPL v2.
> If your utility is to be installed into the IDE, LGPL v2 is the best.
> Executables outside the IDE can have other licenses but GPL or LGPL is 
> still recommended.
>
IMHO:

It is also acceptable to have a "mixed license". E.g.
    Licensed [L]GPL 2 [OR: "2 or later"] or MIT at the users choice.
    Anyone using/modifying this code must keep at least either one of 
the two Licenses, but is free to remove the other.

We inherited a case like this in SynEdit. You can check there how 
exactly it is described.

-----
As Juha said:
- If it is an IDE plugin, to be compiled into the IDE
- and to be included in our repo / shipped with the installer
then it should really include/be [L]GPL at least including version 2.

If it is to be run from the IDE, lazbuild, our makefiles, or the like, 
then it should be permissive enough not to burden us with displaying 
special notes.
Of course a mention in the "about" dialog can be required. (not sure if 
Lazbuild currently has any provisions to print such things as 
"attribution notes".

-----
As with all things that evolve over time, we already have to many 
Licenses, on different parts of the code.

This imposes extra work on users, who have to check what the can use in 
their projects.
By including [L]GPL 2 (with/without the LCL linking permission) a common 
base would be kept.
Additional/Optional Licenses should be no issue.
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