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Simple question, which I cannot answer myself. Why Ethereum have an LGPLv3 license? Bitcoin has MIT license.

Thank you.

eth
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Maximi
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1 Answers1

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Until client teams answer for themselves, here is information on non-GPL clients.

From What exactly is an Ethereum client and what clients are there? there's two of them:

Besu (Java) is Apache 2.

Trinity (Python) is MIT.

eth
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  • IMHO all derivatives of Ethereum (with LGPLv3) should hold the same license. – Maximi May 12 '20 at 15:13
  • Which is not the case of Besu and Trinity - regards to dates on GitHub repository and codebase. Latest commits on following links: https://github.com/hyperledger/besu/commits/master?after=310e0b77e5f750159ca7c8fe85a4658e0c05e2a9+2100 https://github.com/ethereum/trinity/commits/master?after=34cd38efceacbc8ffa490e808939af16957a4d5f+6170 – Maximi May 12 '20 at 20:39
  • I open this topic on the Trinity project and get a straight answer from a team member of Ethereum. You can change the license from LGPLv3 to MIT. More info: https://github.com/ethereum/trinity/issues/1734

    I will keep this question still open to get opinion from legal point of view.

     – Maximi May 19 '20 at 14:44
  • You have it backwards. Correct is "MIT licensed software can be re-licensed as GPL software, and integrated with other GPL software, but not the other way around." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License – eth May 20 '20 at 03:45
  • I agree that: "MIT licensed software can be re-licensed as GPL..." But as mentioned before this discussion is vice-versa. Trinity migrates from LGPLv3 to MIT. And they announce it publicly in the issue I sent. – Maximi May 20 '20 at 16:53
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    Trinity was always MIT: it did not migrate from LGPLv3 to MIT (because that migration is not possible). In the 1734 issue you linked, it is wrong to "assume any fork of Ethereum (licensed under LGPLv3) can hold MIT license". – eth May 20 '20 at 22:25
  • Well, it seems like different people have different opinions. And your assumption is in contrast with the following discussion: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/9739/can-i-change-the-license-of-a-forked-project-from-lgplv3-to-mit/9741#9741 The answer in the following link was "No" and you are saying basically "Yes". But for sure Trinity wasn't written from scratch - it is derivation work. Please look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design also. I am really curious why you can be so sure. – Maximi May 21 '20 at 08:25
  • What makes you say Trinity wasn't a clean room design? You can double-check with them at github.com/ethereum/trinity/issues if you'd like. – eth May 23 '20 at 05:32
  • Sir, I am not the only one who is saying that. I am saying, Trinity needs strong legal opinion regards to the license. For sure it is derivative work. I want to be sure that users of Trinity and Bisu will not have issues. – Maximi May 24 '20 at 11:37