Is LGPL scaring off potential corporate "clients"?

Question

I have an open source Java library (http://jolbox.com) that is currently LGPL licensed.

From what I understand LGPL, anyone can basically just link it in their app and distribute it, commercial or not, without the risk of having to "contaminate" their code. However I sometimes get the perception that companies misunderstand this and will not touch anything with the letters GPL in the license.

Is this justified in your company and if so which license would be ideal?

(I just care about getting an acknowledgement for my work -- not if anyone else gets rich in the process)

Answer 1

If your solution is worthy you will get acknowledgement anyway. Look at SQLite3 - it's public domain, yet the most widely deployed database.

Answer 2

I think the corporates are slowly but surely warming up to LGPL. That said, you might want to look at some more permissive licenses like the MIT, BSD and Apache ones - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_free_software_licence

Answer 3

I think the answer depends on the version. LGPL v3 is poison to most companies, because it's worded in such a way that they'd have to make any system that uses a component licensed under LGPL v3 to anyone who asked for it.

Whether you agree that even having the most proprietary source code in your possession would do you much good is another matter, but that's their concern.

Answer 4

After some due consideration, I have switched to using Apache 2.0.

Thanks to all for your feedback!