Releasing company's code on free software licence

Question

My company (EU-based) is considering to release some parts of our code under a free software license. We are going to ask lawyers, but firstly I'd like to ask what problems should we expect when doing that? We are planning to use LGPL license, mostly because we want to be able to reuse other people's code in our (closed) software later too.

Edit: We own all the code we want to be released (everything was written by a single developer, and he actually proposed to opensource the code). Also we don't care about reusing this code by our competitors; this piece of code is more or less orthogonal to what we do for living. We do expect that this code will be improved by others (or at least spot any bugs), but it is actually good enough for us already.

Thanks for opinions.

Answer 1

Possible problems:

• You do not own the rights on all of your own code (e.g. some portion was made by a freelancer but the rights were never properly transfered)
• You expect something to happen with your code (e.g. other people to improve it) but it never happens
• Your code becomes used in a competing product and you cannot prevent that
• You want to withdraw the freedom and find out you can't

Answer 2

If you use the LGPL, contributions from other people can still be done under the GPL, which would prevent you from reusing their code in close-source software. You'll have to watch out for that. Also, even if their contribution is LGPLed, you only have the freedom to not open the source if that code is used in an external DLL or the like.

This is a very rough description, and the implications of that are quite hard to grasp (I don't fully either) and also depend on what kind of software you're developing, so you definitively have to consult a lawyer.

You might also want to look at what Qt does.

Answer 3

I would recommended releasing under LGPL or BSD style license, which does not contain any responsibilities from your side.

Regarding the use of code by other people, again, use only BDS licensed code and you are all set.

Answer 4

If your company wants to keep some control of what is the official code, I suggest you the Artistic License 2.0, instead of LGPL.