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LGPL request

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:53 am
by top-master
we are currently writing a SoftEther VPN client for Windows using our SoftEther based VPN servers
however although currently we are just using SoftEther as an external `.dll` file, the GPL licence does force us to provide the source-code of the Executable file (i.e. `*.exe` file which is dynamically linked to `soft-ether.dll`)

but the problem is our Executable file does contain (except from a simple GUI) the authentication and user token algorithms which anyone would prefer to keep private and closed-source, so we ask here to add the LGPL license to the SoftEther project so we can keep our software secure.

there are two work-around's that could be used even without any support or additional license:

1. instead of using SoftEter as `.dll` file we could just separate our authentication and ... in a `.dll` file and keep it closed-source but it will be hard since that `authentication.dll` would cause us a large rewrite in the source codes

2. or we could keep authentication in our Executable but make SoftEther background service listen for commands on a localhost port using this we do not need to make anything open-source since the GPL does allow such indirect commands and we would just need to make our changes to SoftEther background service public (which is no problem for us until our authentication and ... are closed source)

but nothing from the above would be required if support for LGPL is added to SoftEther project

Edit:
to get sure did also request at:
https://github.com/SoftEtherVPN/SoftEtherVPN/issues/697

Re: LGPL request

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:47 am
by fenice
I think you'd be better asking this on github.

Re: LGPL request

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:23 am
by top-master
looks like there's work in progress on moving towards Apache or ... license at:
https://github.com/SoftEtherVPN/SoftEtherVPN/issues/516