Short for
Lesser General Public
License, the
license that accompanies some
open
source software that details how the software and its accompany source code can
be freely copied, distributed and modified. A Lesser General Public License is
used to license free software so that it can be incorporated into both free
software and
proprietary software, and is often referred to as the weaker sibling
of GPL. The LGPL and GPL licenses differ with one major exception; with LGPL the
the requirement that you open up the source code to your own extensions to the
software is removed. The most widespread use of LGPL is in reference to the
GNU LGPL.
LGPL is also called
GNU libraries and formally called the
Library
GPL.
Contrast with GPL.
Learn more about
Open Source in Webopedia's "
Did You Know...?" section.
