[Qt-interest] LGPL and static linking

[Jeroen De Wachter]

By the way: if anyone *does* have an answer to this question that's been
checked by a law firm or legal department, please tell the rest of us...

On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 10:57 +0100, Jeroen De Wachter wrote:
> 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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