[Xorp-announce] XORP License change

[Atanu Ghosh]

As of Thursday, October 2, 2008, we will be licensing XORP.org code
under the GNU General Public License, Version 2 (GPL v2), with selected
libraries made available under the GNU Lesser General Public License,
Version 2.1 (LGPL v2.1). The license changes will apply to all code
currently in the XORP.org CVS tree and to all future XORP.org releases,
with the exception of code derived from other sources.

Our goals in moving to the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 licenses are threefold:

- First, we want to ensure that improvements and extensions to the
XORP.org code base are made freely available to the XORP.org
community. The copyleft provision of the GPLv2 maximizes the likelihood
that this will be the case.

- At the same time, we believe that the best way to encourage innovation
in the broader networking arena is to make it easy for network
application developers to take advantage of XORP's open APIs and
extensible architecture. We aim to build an ecosystem of developers who
adopt XORP as their network operating system of choice, regardless of
whether their own code is open or proprietary. The LGPLv2.1 provides a
straightforward way for them to do so.

- Finally, we don't want to proliferate open source licenses. Moving
from the customized wording of our original XORP license to the broadly
used OSI-approved GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 licenses is a step toward that end.

Commercial users of XORP who believe they may be impacted or limited by
the XORP.org license changes are encouraged to contact us at info at xorp.net.

--The XORP Team