On 2001.12.13 21:06 Ori Pessach wrote:
On Thursday 13 December 2001 18:44, David Elliott wrote:
Umm, do I sense a little Deja Vu here. IIRC Wine's original license
had
some issues that meant it wasn't GPL compatible. The new license,
which I
understand is a modified BSD or an X11 license, basically says do
whatever
you want with it.
LGPL would have been ideal except several people pointed out that
because
it disallows static linking it would be unsuitable for systems without
a
dynamic linker (e.g. embedded systems).
I think it's worth pointing out that the LGPL doesn't force you to distribute shared libraries. You can statically link your own work with a library covered by the LGPL, as long as you provide object code (or source) of your work, allowing a user to relink the LGPL library with your work.
Hmm... I remember the LGPL stating that the end-user must be able to relink the application with a newer version of the library. For some reason I also thought it stipulated that in order to achieve that it must be dynamically linked. Although you are correct from a technical standpoint that someone could distribute an object file that is the app minus the LPGL part which would then allow one to relink with a modified version of the LPGL part.
Okay, I just read the license and you are indeed correct. So that pretty much gets rid of the argument that the LGPL is unsuited for embedded systems because of the need to statically link sometimes.
You must also allow modifications to your work, and reverse engineering for debugging the modifications.
Hmm, in other words no EULA clauses stating you can't modify or reverse engineer the binary. I think that is a very acceptable stipulation.
That, at least, is my reading of the license.
Ori Pessach
Thank you for enlightening me about the LGPL.
-Dave