[ODE] ODE's license

[Russ Smith]

hi all,

i've recently had a number of enquiries about ODE's LGPL license and
whether it is a problem to use ODE in a commercial product. in general
it's no problem - the only minor issue is the LGPL "relinking" clause
that asks that ODE be linked in as an external shared library (i.e. a
DLL). however, there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the
LGPL, so i have decided to provide a dual licence: LGPL or BSD. what
this will mean is that you may accept ODE under *either* the existing
LGPL license, *or* the slightly less restrictive BSD license shown
below. commercial users will have no problems with the BSD license.

this change will probably happen in a few days. the (very few) people
who have contributed code to the ODE core may chose to object to this,
as they may have expected that their code would be licensed under LGPL,
not BSD (note that ODE's "contrib" directory is separately licensed).
i'll deal with any objections by simply taking the relevant feature
out and reimplementing it at a later stage ... but i am not expecting
anyone to object to this. comments?

also: various people have contributed code to ODE that i've been sitting
on for a while. i'll get around to this eventually, but i've had very
little time for ODE recently. one thing i'll consider is hosting ODE
on sourceforge and allowing any interested parties to be administrators
of the project (and thus you can add your own code - but you have to
test and document it yourselves as well :-) ).

comments?


------ ODE's BSD LICENSE ---

Copyright (c) 2001,2002, Russell Smith.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Neither the names of ODE's copyright owner nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.


--
Russ Smith
http://www.q12.org