Yubico Forum

I was just curious as to why the libu2f-host library was licensed under the relatively restrictive GPLv3. This license will prevent this library from being used in many situations:

• It cannot be used at all (even if linked dynamically) in projects that are not open source.
• It cannot even be used in open source projects that are distributed on closed platforms (like iOS, many flavors of Android, etc).

I would think that the wider adoption of U2F by the world would be paramount. Indeed, if U2F is to be adopted widely, it makes sense to make it easy to integrate into existing products. In such a case, it would seem that LGPLv2 would be the most restrictive license that wouldn't outright prevent adoption. A MIT or BSD license would make adoption even easier.

I totally understand using GPLv3 for open source projects that offer a competitive advantage (like javacard apps, in which case the license conveniently restricts distribution on closed platforms, like smart cards without known management keys), but the choice of the GPLv3 for this host-side library seems counterproductive to me.

What am I missing?

I am also curious about this. There is only one "thread" about GPLv3 in all the forums here (when searching normally, at least). Are there any other (openly available) disccussions about this somewhere else, related to Yubico's decision on which license(s) to use?

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Regards,
Nomadus

The library is licensed under the LGPLv2+ license. The command line tool and some other files are licensed under the GPLv3+ license. The license for each file should be clear from the comments at the top of it. See the files COPYING (for GPLv3) and COPYING.LGPLv2 for complete license texts. If you have a desire to use this package under another license, please contact us to discuss the reason. For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package note that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.

https://developers.yubico.com/libu2f-host/Releases/

We recently changed the license from GPL to LGPGL.