Open Source licensing has for some time been a way to involve a community of developers in the actual evolution of particular pieces of code. Franz Inc. has decided to publish select bodies of Franz-developed code under an Open Source license.
We believe this will help teach Common Lisp programmers to write better applications, demonstrate the uses of Common Lisp to non-Common Lisp programmers, and give something to the community that has supported us over the years.
The popular open source licenses do not take into consideration the special features of dynamic languages -- especially Lisp. In an effort to remedy this, we have created a new license called the LLGPL, the Lisp Lesser GNU Public License. The LLGPL consists of a preamble, developed specifically for Lisp applications, and the LGPL. Please note that when these two conflict, the preamble takes precedence.
Franz Inc. will use the LLGPL with all of its open source products, and you can too. Feel free to incorporate the LLGPL into any of your open source Lisp applications. We recommend putting the contents of template/header.txt, or something similar, at the beginning of your source files. We also recommend putting the file template/license.txt somewhere in the root directory of your distribution.
There is an informal community support and development mailing list (opensource@franz.com) for these open source projects. We encourage you to take advantage by subscribing to the list. Once you're subscribed, send email to opensource@franz.com with your questions, comments, suggestions, and patches.