LGPL and the OpenVZ tools
A few weeks ago, I had posted here regarding OpenVZ tools being GPL. Trouble is, some projects that are LGPL are creating wonderful tools to manage virtualization, but are unable to use the OpenVZ userland management tools code to support OpenVZ along with other virtualization technologies like Xen, QEMU and KVM. In FOSS, you just need to ask. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote on the list:
”
Virtualization is going mainstream and there are several tools being
developed by many 3rd parties that deal with various virtual machine
technologies. Several of these tools are licensed under the GPL. One
promising library, LibVirt (http://libvirt.org) is licensed under the
LGPL. As of today, Libvirt supports KVM, Xen and QEMU. If it needs to
support OpenVZ quickly, it would be great if the userland control code
is available in a library format under the LGPL, whereas the utilities
can still be GPL. Re-inventing the wheel is a waste of time for
everyone involved since it will take considerable time to include
freshly writen code to control OpenVZ based VMs into LibVirt.Will OpenVZ(SWSoft) be willing to release the userland control code
(most of it in the “lib” directory of the vzctl distribution) under
the LGPL so that other tools can use it efficiently?
“
There was one user, who came forward to do the work, by properly splitting the tools and core functions into and library proper and programs that link to it, if it was agreed that the code be released under the LGPL.
After many days, there seems to have been some consideration on those lines. One SWSoft(the company behind OpenVZ) employee, has replied to a user who is having problems with the current library thus:
”
current libvzctl imho is brain damaged as it was never actually been designed properly. after the licensing question will be resolved I think it will be greately reworked.
“
If the tools are reworked on, and a LGPL version of the tools is available, then integration into LibVirt will be a breeze and it will save a lot of “reinventing the wheel”.