[Qt-interest] LGPL and static linking

Jeroen De Wachter jeroen.dewachter at barco.com
Wed Nov 25 10:57:34 CET 2009


Hi,

According to our interpretation of the LGPL text, it should be allowed
to link a program statically to an LGPL library...

this is also mentioned specifically on the wikipedia link you provided
yourself:
"Alternatively, a statically linked library is allowed if either source
code or linkable object files are provided."

As long as the customer is able to use a modified version of the
LGPL-covered code, you should be ok, I think...
(no guarantees though, I'm not a lawyer and certainly no open source
licensing expert)

Kind regards,

Jeroen

On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 10:32 +0100, Bastian Bense wrote:
> LGPL only allows for dynamic linking of the Qt libraries. If you want static linking, you can switch to GPL (probably not what you want), or get a commercial license.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License#Differences_from_the_GPL
> 
> 
> 
> Am 25.11.2009 um 10:09 schrieb Stefan Josefsson:
> 
> > I am planning to develop a commercial closed source application on top of Qt/E and would like to use Qt statically linked to my application as this gives a substantial boost to the startup time and also reduces the RAM usage. The question is whether I am allowed to use the LGPL license of Qt. I have read a number of discussions about LGPL and static linking and some say that it is not allowed (those that know a little bit less?) and some say that it is allowed (those that know a bit more?) as long as you provide the rest of the world with a way to recompile the application with a modified version of the LPGL:d code (Qt in this case). See for instance these links: 
> > http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=541047 
> > http://www.ics.com/files/docs/Qt_LGPL.pdf 
> > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1066632 
> > 
> > What is Nokias view of static linking and LGPL? 
> > 
> > I also just read on the blog that the QtScript module from now on will be under LPGL even if you buy a commercial license of Qt, so a commercial license is not the solution for using static linking with Qt if you want to use QtScript. 
> 
> 
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