[singpolyma3]

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.

[cesarb]

> If you ship alongside your binary a bundle of eg .o files

You might even be able to use partial linking (ld -r) to ship a single .o file instead of a bunch of them.

[bla3]

The linked post does mention that:

> or distribute object files for recompilation

[Wowfunhappy]

> 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?

[jcelerier]

Yes. For instance some Cisco app on iOS that uses gstreamer (LGPL) does exactly this.

[jimbobthrowawy]

Do you mean iOS the iphone operating system, or cisco IOS the router operating system?

[jcelerier]

the iPhone operating system: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/jabb...

[leni536]

> 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.

[alok-g]

Cool!

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.

[singpolyma3]

I don't see why not. So long as the LGPL part can be modified and replaced, you're good.

I am not a lawyer.

[saagarjha]

I mean, if you're willing to do that why not just dynamically link?

[alok-g]

The OP article is saying that static linking leads to size reduction. That's why asking.

[saagarjha]

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.

[alok-g]

Ok. I understood. Thanks for explaining.