Re: Copyright and license of GNOME icons ...

["Michael K. Johnson" <johnsonm redhat com>]

Gerald Gutierrez writes:
>I realized after I wrote my initial message that many of the GNOME icons
>are distributed under the gnome-libs package which is under the LGPL
>license. Effectively, then, if I use the icons I'm actually using part of
>that library. This implies that the software which uses the icons, itself,
>is not required to be licensed under the LGPL or GPL. However, the
>software, when "linked", produces an executable that must be covered by the
>LGPL.
>
>So what does "linking" mean in the context of graphics? Perhaps it can mean
>"embedding" into the executable rather than reading them at runtime. The
>latter seems to be more similar to loading a shared library.
>
>Am I on the right track? 

Almost, but not quite.  The LGPL requires that applications either be
linked statically against LGPL'ed libraries, or that the components of
the application (object files) be available so that the application
can be relinked by the user against new versions of the libraries.

That means that (modulo tigert's permission), my interpretation (I am
not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just my understanding of the
case) you either need to keep the graphics as separate files that you
load at run time (just like dynamically linking against a shared library
at runtime) or that your application be distributed in a form in which
the end user can replace the graphics with upgraded graphics without
undue difficulty like binary editing the program image.

michaelkjohnson

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 Linux Application Development       http://www.redhat.com/~johnsonm/lad/