Not true at all. The LGPL does not specify anything about mode of linking or anything like that.
What the LGPL requires is that the end user be able to take the source code for the LGPL part, modify it, recompile it, and then replace the functionality in your binary provided by that part with their new part.
Obviously with dynamic linking this is almist trivial, the end user replaces the so or DLL and done.
With normal static linking, it's only a bit harder. If you ship alongside your binary a bundle of eg .o files and a script that links them together with a .a for the LGPL part for example, this is also compliant without revealing the source code to your non-lgpl part.
> If you ship alongside your binary a bundle of eg .o files and a script that links them together with a .a for the LGPL part for example, this is also compliant without revealing the source code to your non-lgpl part.
This is super clever, I love it! Does any software actually do this?
> If you ship alongside your binary a bundle of eg .o files and a script that links them together with a .a for the LGPL part for example, this is also compliant without revealing the source code to your non-lgpl part.
Do you need to ship it alongside or produce it on request or link to where they can fetch it? It's not like you need to ship source code alongside either for GPL binaries.
Does this also mean that one could put most of the closed source part into a DLL, make a shell executable that is open source and statically link LGPL code into the latter? This then would allow modifications to the LGPL code to be put in just by having the closed source DLL.
You’re not getting a size reduction if you maintain a library boundary, though. What you’re doing is isomorphic to dynamically linking except the app code is in the library and the library code is in the main binary.
I never understood the need for a single executable on windows when folders, zip files, and 100% free installers exist if you don’t like zip files. Also nearly all of the gui kits he’s shooting down have ways to build custom components if that’s what you want to do.
None of these help you if you are dealing with users that move executables for convenient access or think updating the sofware just involves dragging and dropping the new executable into the existing installation folder. Customer support had countless stories like that.
Does using something like APE by jart work? It's a single executable that's also a zipfile. (I assume a replaceable .dll inside the archive is LGPL compliant) I know it's a bit of a tangent, but on platforms like macos the "apps" are all directories with the .app extension, and that doesn't seem to cause issues.
No need for an installer when it's just one file you can run anywhere. And folders/zips are way too hard for the average user. Ask me how I know. My partner gave up an entire game platform because it was delivered as a .7z file they could not figure out.
What the LGPL requires is that the end user be able to take the source code for the LGPL part, modify it, recompile it, and then replace the functionality in your binary provided by that part with their new part.
Obviously with dynamic linking this is almist trivial, the end user replaces the so or DLL and done.
With normal static linking, it's only a bit harder. If you ship alongside your binary a bundle of eg .o files and a script that links them together with a .a for the LGPL part for example, this is also compliant without revealing the source code to your non-lgpl part.