RE: LGPL question



 

Thanks for all the replies.

 

To clarify some of the points raised in all the responses:

o      My application is a GTK+ based GUI in a Windows environment

o      The GTK+ libraries are downloaded and used as-is by me, i.e. as dynamic libraries. Note that these are dynamically-linked libraries resolved, I believe, at load-time, and are not dynamically-loaded, which can be resolved at run-time. To be more specific, I am using the GTK+ APIs as such. I am not doing LoadLibrary() or GetProcAddress(), which are the equivalent of the Unix dlsym(), dlopen(), etc.

o      I am distributing a zipfile containing my .exe, .bat and all the GTK+ .dll files necessary for smooth execution of the GUI.

o      Note that I am not telling the user to install GTK+ themselves. I am distributing the GTK+ .dll files untouched in order to simplify things for my user.

 

Now, to ask specific questions based on your responses:

 

After reading all the responses, I am still a little confused (I may have misunderstood the subtleties here). On the one hand, I have understood that since I am using dynamic GTK+ libraries untouched, therefore my application can be closed-source.

 

On the other hand, I am distributing the libraries (I am not asking the user to install it themselves). Can this be construed as a modification to GTK, thus requiring me to offer access to the sources?

 

Final question: If I do have to provide access to GTK sources, I cannot just point the users to the GTK.org website. I must actually maintain a set of sources, attempt to compile them into .dll’s, and point the user to them?

 

Regards,

- priya

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Murray Cumming [mailto:murrayc murrayc com]
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 2:11 AM
To: Tor Lillqvist
Cc: Priya Suryanarayanan; gtk-list gnome org
Subject: Re: LGPL question

 

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 09:48 +0000, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

> > if I freely distribute the GTK+ libraries alongwith my

> > executables as I have been doing, then I am then required to distribute my

> > source code as well (or document how it can be accessed).

>

> Yes. Either distribute the source code for all LGPL components on the

> same media or website as your own software, or include an offer to

> provide the sources. (It is not enough to just provide a pointer to

> the sources on some other website, for instance ftp.gnome.org.)

 

Priya's question was not completely clear. Priya, in case you were

asking whether using GTK+ (as a dynamically-loaded shared library)

requires you to provide the source code of your _application_, then the

answer is No. If GTK+ was GPL (rather than LGPL) then the answer would

be Yes.

 

--

murrayc murrayc com

www.murrayc.com

www.openismus.com

 

 



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