LGPL and app store

Posted Nov 23, 2012 16:15 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: LGPL and app store by khim
Parent article: Relicensing VLC from GPL to LGPL

Yup, it says that if the user installs a modified library then it must be used. You can argue that the letter of the licence doesn't exclude technological measures to stop the user from installing a modified library, so you can ship the code on a locked-down device to prevent the user from having freedom to change the library despite what the licence says. This is the problem that newer GPL and LGPL versions address.

However I think the spirit and intent of the licence is that the user has freedom to modify the library (as explained in the LGPL's preamble). This is why I wrote in my original post still violates the spirit of the licence, if perhaps not the letter.

Licensing VLC under LGPL rather than GPL doesn't avoid this problem. You are still going against the intent of the licence by distributing via a locked-down app store. You mentioned linking against Apple's proprietary DRM components, which is more likely to be the reason they did it.