[gumby]

> Tangent, but out of curiosity, what was the more important goal in your mind/whoever else was involved? The ability to relink with newer/patched libraries, or simply the ability to inspect/modify the LGPLed code?

The freedom of the user to modify the library and use it was the most important part. It’s a fundamental “right to repair”.

FWIW the people involved were just me, plus John Gilmore who said “why not explicitly make dynamic linking automatically qualify?” which was obviously a good idea, and RMS who was bitterly opposed.

[NohatCoder]

I wonder how many times that has happened? Specifically someone intentionally modifying the behaviour of a closed source program by changing an LGPL library that it depends on.

[freedomben]

I personally know of that happening twice. In both cases it was used to patch a bug in the super old Qt version that was being shipped.

I'm sure it doesn't happen often, but IMHO that doesn't really matter. It's preserving the freedom to do it that is important. I rarely use my right to free speech (that is, saying something that somebody in power would find offensive and want to jail me for), but it's a right I would fight to the bitter end to preserve.

[toyg]

I mean, it's like telling the pope that Jesus is the son of god only on Mondays and Tuesdays, eh...