I have been reading though the Lesser GPL, but there some grey areas for me, particularly the reverse engineering aspects.
Say I'm writing a closed source application that dynamically links with an external library "A", which is covered under the LGPL. LGPL stipulates that the end-user license agreement for my application must make allowances for reverse engineering. I'm cool with that.
Let's say, I'm using another dynamically linked library "B" that falls under under a different license, which does not allow reverse engineering. Library "B" is completely independent of library "A", but of course, both have different licensing demands.
However, if my application dynamically linked with both, am I violating LGPL? If so, what are my options to get around that? This lawyer crap is doing my head in.
edit:
Oops, sorry I accidentally posted this in the wrong forum. Could a mod please move this into "The Business and Law of Game Development" forum? Cheers...
Using LGPL with other licenses
IANAL, but it looks like what you want to do is fine (upon reading LGPL3). I'm pretty sure the whole "reverse engineering" provisions basically just mean "Don't do anything that would prevent a reasonable person from figuring out how you called the library and replacing the library binary with one they compiled themselves" If you read that section, it says "Do not place reverse engineering restrictions on the parts of the library that are in the combined work, and do not place reverse engineering restrictions on the library itself" I interpret that to mean that reverse engineering restrictions on the combined work (or, in your case, external libraries to the combined work) are fine and compatible with the LGPL, as long as you make it clear that reverse engineering the lib itself is fine, and reverse engineering your program for the purpose of interfacing with the lib is also fine. Again, IANAL, but if it were me I'd assume it was ok.
Author
Sorry I was should have mentioned LGPLv2.1. But yeah, that was my initial interpretation. I wasn't clear what was the scope for the "work that uses the library" terminology - whether it only applied to the application that was linking to a LGPL lib, or whether it encompasses everything, both my app and anything else my app is linking to.
Are there libraries that have licenses preventing reverse engineering? I've never heard of this.
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