Is KCFinder a legal alternative to CKFinder

Question

On the one hand there is http://ckfinder.com/

CKFinder or the people behind it have always been very vague about their licenses when we asked information about them, so we aren't really fond of using their commercially licensed products.

So I've looked for an alternative and found http://kcfinder.sunhater.com which comes with an LGPL license, perfect for use in a commercial application that just wants to use the file browser and not modify it.

Now they both look very similar and my question is: is KCfinder a legal alternative to CKfinder? Or is it an exact and modified copy?

Does anyone know this or can find this out?

Answer 1

Yes. Just because KCFinder has a similar name and interface doesn't mean that it violates the license of CKFinder. To do that, it would have to reuse the CKFinder code, and the author says he developed KCFinder "because I was unable to find a usable free alternative of the commercial CKFinder." There's no reason to assume that he copied any code. If he had, the author of KCFinder would have undoubtedly found out, and it would no longer be available.

Its being featured on the SourceForge Blog should erase any doubt. http://sourceforge.net/blog/seek-kcfinder-for-web-file-management/