Re: Dutch Tax software violates the LGPL (Glib/GTK+)

[Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 10:06 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org> wrote:
> On 01/05/2010 08:18 PM, Brian Cameron wrote:
>>>
>>> 1) it is acceptable if a software as widely used as tax software can use
>>> statically Glib/GTK+ libraries for 'compatibility' issues. It is
>>> mentioned that the library is not 'changed'.
>>
>> Yes, this sounds acceptable.
>
> Brian, the key term here is "statically".  That is in conflict with section
> 6 of LGPL 2.1:
>
>  6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also compile or
> link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a
> work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work
> under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit
> modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse
> engineering for debugging such modifications.
>
>
> If the "work" is distributed as shared libraries, it can be modified by the
> customer.  Not so true for statically linked libraries.

Right. A work linking against an LGPL library must meet either
sections 6(a) (provide all the necessary pieces to rebuild the library
and relink it to the full application) or 6(b)(use dynamic linking).
Here it appears neither is done, though perhaps we're missing some
information and the materials necessary for 6(a) are available
somewhere. (Stefan, I assume you've looked for them?)

For the record, I've verified that the work contains a pile of GTK
symbols, no complete copy of the LGPL (as required by section 6), and
(unless Stefan says otherwise) doesn't meet the other terms of LGPL
section 6. So this seems to be a violation of the GTK license.

Past that... these are the days when I wish we had a European lawyer,
to write properly European (preferably properly Dutch) emails to help
clarify things. At any rate, thanks for bringing this up, Stefan- if
you can help us figure out who to contact, we'll look into finding
someone to contact them and explain the situation.

Luis