[Mono-list] Commercial applications question

Jonathan Pryor jonpryor@vt.edu
Sat, 22 May 2004 11:56:13 -0400


On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 09:00, HUGO MALHA FERREIRA wrote:
> The Mono could be distributed for commercial application ?

Yes, as long as you comply with the various licenses... :-)

The C# Class libraries (*.dll) are MIT/X11, equivalent to BSD w/o
advertising clause.  So you can freely use and modify these as long as
you don't remove the copyright statements.

The Mono runtime libraries (libmono.so and related shared libraries) are
LGPL, so you can freely link to these libraries as long as you comply
with the LGPL.  If you don't actually ship the runtime libraries
(example: you provide an RPM package which depends on the appropriate
mono packages), then you have no special responsibilities to fulfill. 
If you bundle the Mono libraries with your app (say for a custom
installer, or you bundle the Mono RPMs with your app), you'll need to
provide the Mono source code and build environment (or the Mono SRPM)
with your app.  See the LGPL for more details.

The Mono applications (mcs, mono, mint, etc.) are typically GPL, though
this can vary by application.

 - Jon