[zeromq-dev] Python bindings with poll.

[Martin Sustrik]

Brian,

> In the past I have used BSD for my open source projects - I am using
> LGPL to match the license
> of zeromq itself.  I realize that the MIT license is even more
> allowing than the LGPL, so I am not worried
> about including your contribution.  But  it is a little awkward to
> have a *patch* released under a separate license.  I am not sure how
> we handle that in terms of licensing.  Also, don't contributions to an
> LGPL project have to be LGPL?  Obviously you can *use* pyzmq in a
> non-LGPL project, but if you contribute to pyzmq itself, doesn't if
> have to be LGPL?  How does zeromq handle this?

pyzmq is your project, so choosing a particular license is your call. 
Underlying libzmq is LGPL'd so there's no restriction on the license 
type you can use. You can even make it commercial (which is not a good 
idea IMO).

If you choose BSD or MIT, you have to ask contributors to submit patches 
under these licenses.

If you choose LGPL, the patches are implicitly LGPL'd - that follows 
from the fact that LGPL requires all the derivative work to be 
republished under LGPL. Thus, you don't even need to ask contributors to 
submit the patch under specific license.

An option is to make pyzmq LGPL and ask contributors for submitting 
under more permissive license. It gives you an option to create more of 
less permissive forks of the codebase, grant additional privileges (see 
0MQ's "static linking exception" introduced last week) etc. However, for 
a small project like pyzmq it's probably not strictly needed and - to be 
honest - asking contributors for explicit licensing is pain in the ass.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

Martin