This seems very misleading. A library released under the GPL cannot be used by non-GPL software. That's by design. It's the reason for the more permissive LGPL

This seems very misleading. A library released under the GPL cannot be used by non-GPL software. That's by design. It's the reason for the more permissive LGPL licence. edit For brevity I ignored dual licensing. If you release your library under both GPL and Apache, then things are of course different. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html