Charisma is now available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (LGPL v3). In this announcement, I'll walk through the key changes, the motivations behind this decision, and what it means for both current and future projects.

Free as in Freedom

Previously, Charisma was distributed under a “free for non-commercial use” license. This permissive license allowed anyone to use the library and integrate it with closed-source applications, but it prohibited commercial use.

Now, with the adoption of the LGPL v3, Charisma can be used in both open-source and commercial software projects, but with a few stipulations aimed at preserving the openness of the library:

• Commercial use is now allowed, but with the key requirement that Charisma must be “relinkable” if used in proprietary software.

• In practice, this means developers can link Charisma as a dynamic library, allowing their users to update Charisma without needing to provide access to the source code of the complete application.

These changes make Charisma more accessible for developers writing desktop software, where they can leverage the library without the legal restrictions of the previous license.

Motivation for the Change

The primary motivation behind this licensing change is to encourage broader adoption of Charisma, particularly on non-embedded systems, like desktops.

Charisma was originally designed for resource-constrained devices, and while it excels in embedded platforms, I’ve always believed its utility extends far beyond those use cases. Desktop and non-embedded developers should have the opportunity to benefit from its features without licensing concerns.

The shift to LGPL v3 opens the door for more developers to integrate Charisma into a wider variety of projects, both open-source and commercial.

Closing Thoughts

At Railgun Labs, each project is licensed on a case-by-case basis. While Charisma is now available under a libre license, this doesn’t necessarily mean that future projects will follow suit. Each project will be evaluated on its own merits.

That said, I hope this move demonstrates my commitment to making Charisma more accessible to more developers, regardless of whether they are working on open-source or commercial software.