[FriBidi] fribidi2 licensing on statically linked embedded systems?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 21:17 +0530, Praveen Patil wrote:
> Hello All,

Hi,

> I have a query on fribidi2 LGPL licensing.
> 
> LGPL seems to require any proprietory software to dynamically link
> (say dll or shared lib) any LGPL'ed library like fribidi, so that the
> user can update the library. But on embedded systems, there is
> typically no dynamically linked library and the library source files
> needs to be statically compiled and linked in to the ROM image.

We have had such requests previously.  The FSF's stance on this is that
you can use LGPL'ed code in embedded systems legally, by providing a .a
archive that the user can link to the LGPL'ed library to build the ROM
image.

> How does fribidi2 licensing works on statically linked embedded
> systems code? To be specific, if I am going to use the fribidi2
> library in my embedded code as below, does that satisfy LGPL license?
> - Keep the fribidi2 library source files (as they are, without any
> modifications with all the licensing information in source files
> intact) in a separate sub directory, statically compiled and linked
> with my code.
> - State that this subdir is under a different license.

That's fine for as long as you allow the relinking, either by providing
source code, or object files (in a .a archive) of the rest of the
system.

> Thanks,
> Praveen

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behdad
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