The SFC article doesn't seem to me to be very clear on this point, but I wonder it has to do with shipping a memory image. Many years ago there was a disussion

The SFC article doesn't seem to me to be very clear on this point, but I wonder it has to do with shipping a memory image. Many years ago there was a disussion between a member of the Squeak Smalltalk community (an IP lawyer by day) and the FSF's Eben Moglen. Moglen's position was roughly along the lines that libraries that are not considered to be deeply linked while out on disk in separate files, become deeply linked when loaded into RAM (or maybe into the same process's virtual address space, or something), such that taking a memory image of such a combination of modules, and using it as a means of distribution would be sufficient to trigger the "viral" aspect of the GPL. (Since Smalltalk systems tend to rely heavily upon memory images, this is why GPL code became distinctly unwelcome in most Smalltalk communities, presumably except for GNU Smalltalk.)