ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Kevin Krammer <anda.skoa@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday, 2013-05-14, Jeremy Bell wrote:
> There is more to it than providing the sources for the library the app
> includes, at least for commercial applications.
> 
> To summarize this:
> http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/439136.html
> 1) The application and the shared library must be distributed separately.
> If the application and the shared library are distributed together (e.g. as
> a bundled, self-contained app package), then the whole work (app + library)
> is considered a "derivative work", similar to static linking the library.

Even if this would be considered similar to static linking, I doubt this would 
change anything.
The  LGPL does not distinguish between linking techniques as long as the 
recepient of the software can replace the LGPL licensed parts as they see fit.
Obviously in order to be able to relink with a static library, the application 
itself must be available additionally as a static library itself.
Inconvenient perhaps, but not impossible.

> For the LGPL, that means your application code must be LGPL

If that were true the code for Chrome and Safari would have to be LGPL. Both 
programs ship with WebKit bundled into a package.
Same would be true for all WebKit using applications that are on a default iOS 
or Android image.

> And, please note that nobody can use the LGPL license of the mono library
> (or any other LGPL library) in an application distributed on iOS or Android
> app stores. All use of mono on those platforms is via a commercial dual
> license sold to them by the author of the library, Xamarin. The LGPL
> license cannot be used with those app packaging models either.

Well, there are Andriod apps [1] that use Qt/Andriod "Necessitas" which 
normally means using the Ministro [2] service which installs LGPL licensed Qt.

Cheers,
Kevin

[1] http://grokbase.com/t/gg/android-qt/12ah3pxe4d/real-world-apps-using-
necessitas
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.necessitas.ministro

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring

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