Can LGPL licenses be used in our proprietary systems?

Question

We want to use either the FCK/CKeditor or the TinyMCE editor in our CRM application. We charge the customer use of the CRM system which is bespoke to use and them. I noticed both the editors have GPL and LGPL licenses. However CKEditor has a Closed License too in addition to the LGPL.

My questions are: 1) Although we don't sell our code or binaries, we provide software as a hosted service, can we use LGPL licenses?

2) Why does CKEditor provide LGPL and Closed licenses if the LGPL should make it easy for any proprietary software to use it? Is it only for systems which are sold as a binary where the product is for example physically installed as an .exe?

Answer 1

LPGL-licensed software can be used in any situation, even commercial software. However, you're still expected to submit any changes you make to the code back to the original developer.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.php

It looks like the Closed license of CKEditor is designed for those companies that don't want to do that, or can't, for whatever reason.

Answer 2

If you don't distribute your source or binaries, you have no problems with the LGPL or GPL. (You would with the Affero GPL and variants.)

If you read the LGPL, you'll find that there are requirements. If you distribute LGPLed software, you're required to distribute source on request, and you have to allow the recipient to relink against his or her own version of the library. In some cases, this may be awkward (for example, if you don't want to provide the library as a DLL), and some places just don't like any sort of copyleft on the software they use. Some companies may prefer paying for a proprietary license as an option.

Answer 3

Yes. The gist of the LGPL is that you can link to LGPL code from proprietary code without affecting the licensing of your proprietary code (linking your code to GPL code requires licensing your code as GPL). If you modify the LGPL code, you must make the source of the modifcations available upon request.

As for offering a closed license, some of their customers may want to be able to customize the licensed code without worrying about sharing the changes.