The MIT license is an Open Source Initiative approved license that provides near total freedom to use, change and distribute the library in whatever way a company, or individual, may choose to. libsnmp was previously released under the LGPL, also an OSI approved license.

"We wanted to give more people the opportunity to use libsnmp," said Justin Warren, General Manager, Research and Development for Unicity. "We decided that a change of license was the best way to do that.

"Some developers had concerns with the LGPL, particularly with regard to commercial software," Justin said. "Apparently some lawyers have expressed anxiety about the conditions imposed by LGPL software and the ability of companies to comply with those conditions. There has been increased focus on compliance issues in recent years, both in Australia and the U.S., so people are reluctant to increase their compliance burden. Sarbanes-Oxley is particularly onerous, I believe.

"The perceived complexity of using LGPL software alongside other, proprietary, software is causing people to choose not to use LGPL software rather than have to deal with the compliance issue. That's a great shame.

"The change in license wasn't taken lightly. We originally chose the LGPL to ensure that improvements to the library, by us or anyone else, would be available to everyone. With the new license, there is now the risk that someone might take libsnmp and make significant changes to it that they refuse to share with the rest of the community. We think the chances of that actually happening are fairly remote, and the potential for more people to use the software is worth the risk."

libsnmp is available for free download at http://www.seafelt.com/software/.