Licensing a Gradle plugin under GPL?

Help/Discuss
1

Hi,
I was wondering if its possible and feasible to license a Gradle plugin under the GPL.

If I understand correctly, configuration of the plugin in the buildscript via groovy code constitutes a derivative work, an thus forces all buildscripts that use the plugin to be licensed under the GPL. Using the LGPL ensures that this isnt an issue. However using a GPL licensed Gradle plugin should mean nothing to anyone unless they plan on distributing their build.gradle, and even then its not an issue because it cant really be distributed as a binary can it?

Anyways… on to my real question. Do you guys think anyone would simply not use a Gradle plugin because its licensed under GPL? could it be illegal for some people to use a plugin if its under GPL? Am ignorant and dont know what im talking about?

2

Yes, I have numerous corporate customers who wouldn’t use such a plugin. Is there any reason why you’d want such a restrictive license?

Cheers, Paul.

3

An associate of mine is writing a library that would be very convenient for me and would replace one of my current dependencies. He mentioned that he would prefer the GPL library, but if I want to use it, my plugin must also be GPL. It seems il just have to convince him to use the LGPL in this case…