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I am looking at the Zstandard library and it says that it is dual licensed, BSD and GPLv2. What does it mean? If I use libraries in a non open source program will the license be GPL or BSD?
In the source files I can see this text:
you may select either version 2 of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") or BSD license ("BSD").
Does this mean that I can use the code and just apply the BSD license to it?
Does this mean that I can use the code and just apply the BSD license to it?
Yes, this is means exactly this. This is somewhat redundant since the 3-clause BSD they use is already considered as "compatible" with the GPL.
As a user, you can elect to use either license, therefore you can pick the BSD license and ignore the GPL alright if you wish to do so.
Offering a choice of license is a somewhat common approach. And choice is good within reason, though it can be abused to absurd (or funny) levels, such as in this 8-way choice:
PYBLAKE2 IS OCTUPLE-LICENSED UNDER THE FOLLOWING LICENSES (choose one or several at your own discretion):
CC0 Universal 1.0 - http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0
Unlicense — http://unlicense.org/
WTFPL Version 2 - http://www.wtfpl.net/
Apache Public License 2.0 - https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
OpenSSL License - https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html
MIT License - https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
The BSD 3-Clause License - https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
ISC License - https://opensource.org/licenses/ISC
