can commercial product be developed using toolkit whose licensing fall under GPL/LGPL
 

:confused: I am totally confused about the licensing criteria of GNU GPL and GNU LGPL. I want to clarify a few things like:

1. If I want to write an application in LINUX using any one of the available GNU GPL tools should my code also goes under GNU GPL Licensing??

2. What is the basic difference between GNU GPL and LGPL in terms of commercial product development??

3. Can commercial product be developed using toolkits whose licensing falls under GPL ?? Or is it suitable to write a commercial application using toolkits whose licensing falls under LGPL??

4. What I get is that if my product falls under GPL Licensing I have to give the source code to the client along with the product. But for LGPL I am not bound to give the source code. Am I right??

5. Among the tools (QT, GTK+, wxWindows) which in your openion will be te best one to develop a commercial product and why??

Eagerly waiting fo your reply

Thanks,
susin

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

That's their website.

To be honest if you're going to be developing, marketing and releasing a commercial product i'd shell out for some sort of assistance (starter pack, lawyer, wahtever) To avoid being sued or something later (which happens too much these days).

As i understand it developing your OWN code with tools covered under the GPL is fine, they release their source, but you don't have to. But as soon as you include SOMEONE ELSES GPL code then it becomes necessary to open your source up (i believe people can make money and still be open source).

That's just the impression i got, DO NOT take me word for it :)

One of the products you mentioned, QT, has it's own dual license. If you produce a commercial product you need to license QT with them. Look in the Bison source. Under some circumstances, the code produced by it is covered by the GPL, while under others, this is relaxed and you don't need to. Mysql also has it's own license. You are free to use MySQL yourself, but if you include it in a product that you sell, you may need to license it. I believe that using some libraries, the products produced by them are not covered, but for other libraries, the products would be.

You need to examine each program on it's own to make sure which license applies.

If I am not mistaken:
What comes to you as free must remain free.
If your code does not contain GPL elements (fragments, snippets, whatever) then two things apply:
1. The GPL no longer applies
2. There would be no way of knowing how it was generated, which means that 1 is irrelevant.