>A closed source product is still closed source even if you ship the source code to paying customers, so long as the license prohibits them from sharing that so

>A closed source product is still closed source even if you ship the source code to paying customers, so long as the license prohibits them from sharing that source code with the general public There is an important distinction between having legal protection and having technical protection. Giving up the code may not cause you to lose legal protection, but it can certainly lead you to lose control of your product in fact. As for the notes about how software used to be shipped, that's OK. But it does not disprove anything I said. Shipping a shared library and a program that loads it is simpler than anything else you can think of involving object files or whatever (that complies with LGPL). It is an approach that works on basically all platforms, requires no additional tools, and is often extremely easy to implement. Library compatibility issues are also minimal, if you are careful. Of course switching to MIT eliminates these issues, but can cause other issues with people not contributing back to the libraries.