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This is why I don't like GPL-like licenses; Only a court ruling will give you a degree of certainty. Now sure, you could argue that's the case for all OSS. But

This is why I don't like GPL-like licenses; Only a court ruling will give you a degree of certainty. Now sure, you could argue that's the case for all OSS. But the GPL family of licenses leave a lot of legal wiggle room. Unlike for example file based licenses such as the MPL or CDDL. The LGPL is also an interesting one. People tend to think it's less strict then the GPL. However it has a clause which says you need to provide the means for someone to change the LGPL library and reintegrate those changes in your work. How does that even work for a statically linked binary?

f1shy 3y ago
Is not that the case for basically anything? At the end, if there is a conflict, you have to go to court, and then the better lawyer will win.
__david__ 3y ago
You also ship a .o file that includes everything _except_ the LGPL-ed library. The user can re-link against a newer .a to get a new linked executable. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen it done though… And that's just C—what does it mean for something like Go or Rust where it's not really easy to get partially linked program? No idea :-).
dontlaugh 3y ago
In practice, you can’t statically link. Some LGPL libraries explicitly include a static linking exception.
- okanat 3y ago
  You can. At least with C and C++. It is just tedious. You can provide the object files of the closed program or reduce it down to single object file.
phh 3y ago
> The LGPL is also an interesting one. People tend to think it's less strict then the GPL. However it has a clause which says you need to provide the means for someone to change the LGPL library and reintegrate those changes in your work. Isn't that true only for LGPLv3? This requirement also happen on GPLv3.
dkersten 3y ago
> How does that even work for a statically linked binary? I learned it this way: LGPL is basically GPL unless you dynamically link. Sure, there are workarounds to make it compatible with static linking, as others have mentioned, but unless you’re willing to jump through those hoops, LGPL restricts you to only dynamic linking.
- deleted 3y ago
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braza 3y ago
At least in some places in Europe, at the time that you have some dispute like this you will need to prepare and disclose provisions for your shareholders and place that in your balance sheet as a potential liability. I've worked in a company that entered in a dispute with Microsoft regarding licensing of SQL Server, and since the legal dispute was more than USD 2 million our CFO was obligated to place that as a balance sheet loss under legal provisions. Eventually we won the case and the "money" went back to the cash flow.
deleted 3y ago
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f1shy 3y ago

Is not that the case for basically anything? At the end, if there is a conflict, you have to go to court, and then the better lawyer will win.

__david__ 3y ago

You also ship a .o file that includes everything _except_ the LGPL-ed library. The user can re-link against a newer .a to get a new linked executable. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen it done though… And that's just C—what does it mean for something like Go or Rust where it's not really easy to get partially linked program? No idea :-).

dontlaugh 3y ago

In practice, you can’t statically link. Some LGPL libraries explicitly include a static linking exception.

okanat 3y ago
You can. At least with C and C++. It is just tedious. You can provide the object files of the closed program or reduce it down to single object file.

phh 3y ago

> The LGPL is also an interesting one. People tend to think it's less strict then the GPL. However it has a clause which says you need to provide the means for someone to change the LGPL library and reintegrate those changes in your work. Isn't that true only for LGPLv3? This requirement also happen on GPLv3.

dkersten 3y ago

> How does that even work for a statically linked binary? I learned it this way: LGPL is basically GPL unless you dynamically link. Sure, there are workarounds to make it compatible with static linking, as others have mentioned, but unless you’re willing to jump through those hoops, LGPL restricts you to only dynamic linking.

deleted 3y ago
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braza 3y ago

At least in some places in Europe, at the time that you have some dispute like this you will need to prepare and disclose provisions for your shareholders and place that in your balance sheet as a potential liability. I've worked in a company that entered in a dispute with Microsoft regarding licensing of SQL Server, and since the legal dispute was more than USD 2 million our CFO was obligated to place that as a balance sheet loss under legal provisions. Eventually we won the case and the "money" went back to the cash flow.

deleted 3y ago

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