GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later

Also known as GNU LGPL Version 3 or later, GNU LGPL v3 or later, GNU LGPLv3+, GNU Lesser General Public License Version 3 or later, LGPL Version 3 or later, LGPL-3.0+.

Commercial use: allowed
Share alike: required
Attribution: required (keep the copyright and license notices)

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Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/LGPL-3.0-or-later

Permissions

Charge distribution fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Modification notice from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Modification notice from the text
- Notice from the text
- Source code from the text
Patent grant from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

Change license from the text

License-wide duties

Share alike from the text

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

Promote by default rule (adopted)

This license says nothing about Promote, and the graph applies this reading in all jurisdictions it covers: it is not permitted unless the license permits it.

A licence that says nothing about endorsement is read as not allowing it: the licence gives the licensee no right to use the licensor's name or marks in a way that states or implies that the licensor endorses the licensee or its product, while stating truthfully that a work is based on or uses the licensed work is a different act that this rule does not decide. A copyright licence grants rights in the work, and the right to use a name or a trademark is a separate right under trademark law and the protection of names, which a silent copyright licence does not pass on. Combining a licence that is silent about endorsement with one that permits it shows a conflict marked as coming from this rule.

Basis Trademark and name rights are separate from copyright: Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 article 9 lets the proprietor of an EU trade mark prevent all third parties not having his consent from using the sign in the course of trade, and Directive (EU) 2015/2436 article 10, 15 U.S.C. 1114 and 1125(a), section 12 BGB and section 43 ABGB protect marks and names in the same way. The library's evidence is Creative Commons 4.0 section 2(b)(2): Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License. A copyright licence that is silent grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to suggest endorsement (Worldwide)

Further terms

These are the things the license says about itself beyond the acts it permits, forbids and requires: when it ends, how long there is to put a breach right, which law governs it, and so on. A term that comes from the DALICC vocabulary links to its definition.

Compatible with: GPL-3.0-only
Compatible with: GPL-3.0-or-later
Cure period: 30 days
Or later version option: Yes
Terminates on breach: Yes

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Accepting warranty or additional liability

you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee

Additional clauses

You may convey a Combined Work under terms of your choice that, taken together, effectively do not restrict modification of the portions of the Library contained in the Combined Work and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications, if you also do each of the following: a) Give prominent notice with each copy of the Combined Work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License. b) Accompany the Combined Work with a copy of the GNU GPL and this license document. c) For a Combined Work that displays copyright notices during execution, include the copyright notice for the Library among these notices, as well as a reference directing the user to the copies of the GNU GPL and this license document. d) Do one of the following: 0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source. 1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version. e) Provide Installation Information, but only if you would otherwise be required to provide such information under section 6 of the GNU GPL, and only to the extent that such information is necessary to install and execute a modified version of the Combined Work produced by recombining or relinking the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version. (If you use option 4d0, the Installation Information must accompany the Minimal Corresponding Source and Corresponding Application Code. If you use option 4d1, you must provide the Installation Information in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source.) Combined Libraries. You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library side by side in a single library together with other library facilities that are not Applications and are not covered by this License, and convey such a combined library under terms of your choice, if you do both of the following: a) Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the Library, uncombined with any other library facilities, conveyed under the terms of this License. b) Give prominent notice with the combined library that part of it is a work based on the Library, and explaining where to find the accompanying uncombined form of the same work.

Info

Target asset types: Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
Legal code: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher: Free Software Foundation
SPDX identifier: LGPL-3.0-or-later on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: LGPL-3.0-or-later

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/LGPL-3.0-or-later",
  "license-title": "GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later",
  "spdx-id": "LGPL-3.0-or-later",
  "attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/LGPL-3.0-or-later> .

RDF, JSON-LD

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/LGPL-3.0-or-later"
  }
}

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/LGPL-3.0-or-later" rel="license">GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge

Markdown

[![License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later](https://dalicc.net/license-library/LGPL-3.0-or-later/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/LGPL-3.0-or-later)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/LGPL-3.0-or-later"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/LGPL-3.0-or-later/badge.svg" alt="License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later"></a>

Review

Written from the license text by: Giray Havur
Written on: 2026-09-22
Second review: not yet done
Record changed since this review: yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings: 14 recorded, 11 applied to the record, 1 proposed

The record models the "or later" form of the Lesser GPL version 3. Its legal text is the same document that LGPL-3.0-only models, so the deontic model is that record statement for statement. What the identifier adds is the option section 6 gives the licensee to follow this version or any later version the Free Software Foundation publishes. The Lesser GPL is a set of additional permissions on top of GPL version 3, and the conditions for a Combined Work are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, as in the base record.

14 findings

info Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

File name, record id, SPDX identifier and the local name of the IRI are all LGPL-3.0-or-later. The deprecated short form LGPL-3.0+ is carried as a dct:alternative so that a search for it reaches this record.
major Rubric 10 dalicc:variantOf applied

The record copies LGPL-3.0-only statement for statement. What differs: the identifier, dct:title, dct:alternative, dalicc:orLaterVersionOption (true here, false there) and the pair dalicc:variantKind "version-option" with dalicc:variantOf dalicclib:LGPL-3.0-only. The foaf:logo of the base record is kept, because it is the logo of the same licence text.
major Rubric 7 dalicc:orLaterVersionOption applied

Section 6 is the clause the flag stands for: "If the Library as you received it specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU Lesser General Public License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that published version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation." cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType stays dalicc:perpetual, because the text limits neither.
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

The head of the text says that "This version of the GNU Lesser General Public License incorporates the terms and conditions of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, supplemented by the additional permissions listed below", so the grant is the GPL version 3 grant: conveying verbatim copies (GPL section 4), conveying modified source versions (GPL section 5), conveying object code (GPL section 6) and charging for a copy (GPL section 4). The ten permissions of the base record follow from those sentences and are carried over unchanged.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

cc:ShareAlike is a duty of the licence itself, as in the base record, because the Lesser GPL keeps the GPL condition for the Library itself and only adds permissions for an Application that uses it. Attribution, notice and source-code duties hang on distribute, modify and derive, and dalicc:modificationNotice on modify and derive.
minor Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited and dalicc:promote is prohibited, both taken from LGPL-3.0-only. Section 2(b) does let a licensee convey a modified copy "under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy", which is a limited relicensing right the prohibition does not show. The library cannot yet express weak against strong copyleft, which is recorded in docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md, and this record is not the place to change it.
info Rubric 6 dalicc:additionalClauses applied

The warranty disclaimer and the limitation of liability are the two clauses of GPL version 3 that the Lesser GPL incorporates, kept as separate literals; the fee sentence is dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance; the conditions of section 4 (Combined Works) and section 5 (Combined Libraries) are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. All of them are byte for byte the literals of LGPL-3.0-only, because the text is the same document.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

The asset collection carries dcmitype:Software, as in the base record. Section 0 defines "The Library" as a covered work governed by this License, other than an Application or a Combined Work.
info Rubric 9 record none

The consistency check of app.services.composer, run with licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl, reports 0 conflicts for this record.
gap Rubric 8 dalicc:reciprocityScope proposed

The distinguishing feature of this licence is how far the share-alike condition reaches, and the record does not say it. Section 4 lets a licensee "convey a Combined Work under terms of your choice that, taken together, effectively do not restrict modification of the portions of the Library contained in the Combined Work and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications", subject to the conditions the base record quotes. dalicc:reciprocityScope exists and could carry it as a short literal, for example "the library, not an application that links to it". Adding it here alone would break the rule that this record equals its base, so it is proposed for both records of the pair together.
minor Rubric 5 record none

The termination clause and the no-further-restrictions clause of GPL version 3, which this licence incorporates, could be modelled with terms that already exist: dalicc:terminatesOnBreach true, dalicc:curePeriod "30 days", dalicc:sublicenseSurvival true and a dalicc:addLimitation prohibition. They are proposed for the GPL version 3 records in the same way and belong to both records of this pair at once, not to this one alone.
minor Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

dalicc:promote was prohibited and no sentence of this text supports it. The statement was the library's reading of a legal default, that a copyright licence which says nothing about endorsement grants no right to it, and it sat in 519 of 581 records as a house convention. That reading is now an adopted dalicc:DefaultRule of the core dependency graph, which supplies it to every licence that is silent about the action, so a compatibility check reaches the same answer and the record states only what the text states. Removed on 2026-09-23; see section 13 of docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md.
minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance applied

dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance held the whole sentence of Section 4, "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee." Its first half is the permission to charge for a copy, which the record states as dalicc:chargeDistributionFee, and not a warranty clause. The literal now quotes only the second half, "you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee".
major Rubric 10 dalicc:compatibleWith applied

Section 2 lets a modified version of the Library be conveyed "under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy." The GNU GPL is version 3 of it or, where the Library says so, any later version. dalicc:compatibleWith names GPL-3.0-only, GPL-3.0-or-later.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

The changes since version 1 left endorsement to the default rule of the core dependency graph, recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on, corrected it against its text on 2026-09-24, named the license the record itself is published under and recorded the licenses a work under it may be released under.

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6 changes
- removed prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit The endorsement prohibition rested on no sentence of the text; the default rule for endorsement now supplies it.
- changed permission dalicc:chargeDistributionFee
  
  was permission dalicc:chargeDistributionFee
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."
- changed dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance "you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee"
  
  was dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."
  
  Manual edit The first half of the Section 4 sentence, "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey", is the permission to charge for a copy, not a warranty clause.
- added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>
  
  Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.
- added dalicc:compatibleWith dalicclib:GPL-3.0-only
  
  Manual edit Section 2 lets a modified version of the Library be conveyed "under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy." The GNU GPL is version 3 of it or, where the Library says so, any later version.
- added dalicc:compatibleWith dalicclib:GPL-3.0-or-later
  
  Manual edit Section 2 lets a modified version of the Library be conveyed "under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy." The GNU GPL is version 3 of it or, where the Library says so, any later version.
Version 1

Created from the license text on 2026-09-22 (GNU copyleft family (GPL, LGPL, AGPL, FDL)).

View version 1 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.