🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Dec31.200952.19634@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) writes:
> . . .  However, it sure looks to me like the licence does require
>the publication of the proprietary code.  The relevant portions are
>quoted below, please let me know if I'm misreading.

No, not from my reading of it, nor from talking with the people who wrote
it.

>   As an exception to the Sections above, you may also compile or link a
>   "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work
>   containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under
>   terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of
>   the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for
>   debugging such modifications.
>
>Thus the customer is explicitly allowed to modify the "work" for his
>own use as well as modifying the library.  6a goes on to say:

Yes.  You *are* aware that some vendors ship executables with licenses that
prohibit you from disassembling or modifying the code, right?  Even though
you don't have source code to "the work."  The LGPL wants to give you the
ability to diassemble and/or otherwise modify "the work"; maybe you have
made a change to a library function that requies a slightly different
calling convention.

>   [you must] accompany the work [that uses the library] with the complete
>   corresponding machine-readable source code for the Library including
>   whatever changes were used in the work . . . and, if the work is an
>   executable linked with the Library, with the complete machine-readable
>   "work that uses the Library", as object code and/or source code, so
>   that the user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a
>   modified executable containing the modified Library."
>
>Note it explicitly says one must either distribute (a) source or (b)
>source and object.  This is source and object for the work, not just
>for the library.

Excuse me?  No, you must accompany the work with the complete
machine-readable source code for the Library.  You must also supply
machine-readable versinos of the work, in "object code and/or source code."
I see no "source or source and object" in relation to "the work," just the
library.

>I feel that this *does* constitute a work which
>uses the library.  Anybody know for sure?

Yes.  You are correct.

>  A: You must ship at least one of: the source or the object.
>    or
>  B: You must ship the source and may optionally ship the object.

If you use something covered by the LGPL, you must ship source to the
library (object-code to the library is optional), and at least a relinkable
object-file form of "the work."  And, yes, dynamicly-linked libraries were
one of the reasons the LGPL was worded the way it was.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one
sef@kithrup.COM  |  form to bring them all and in the darkness rewrite the
-----------------+  hell out of them" -- sendmail ruleset 3 comment from DEC.
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.