At 01:50 AM 12/02/2006, you wrote:

>Hi all,
>
> > You'd violate the Lazarus licence if you distributed IBO apps that
> > were compiled in it, unfortunately. You can only use components
> > that have an open source licence that is compatible with GPL or
> > LGPL.
>
>I just downloaded and installed Lazarus. Its component libraries come
>with a *modified* LGPL, allowing you to link to libraries with any
>kind of licence. From what I gather from their website and the file
>COPYING.modifiedLGPL, you can not only build closed-source software
>with Lazarus, but also use closed-source third-party component
>libraries. You'd just have to pay attention that you don't use
>additional libraries that are under the strict LGPL.
>
>DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice! Just a note of optimism :-)

Still, it makes sense logically, if not "legally" in FSF terms, since
it would then also permit the Jedi libraries (Mozilla licence,
pronounced "incompatible" by the FSF) and the OS API conversions
(also Mozilla, but the API conversions link to closed libraries at
both compile time and run time) to be in the hierarchies.

Since they are present, and always were, there had to be some kind of
workaround, whether "FSF-legal" or not. The problem of choosing a
licence for Lazarus and stuff spinning off it isn't dissimilar to
that which confronted both PJ and Firebird. It seems that Laz
arrived at a different legal interpretation than the lawyers that
advised those other two projects...mind you, the LGPL itself exists
because the GPL focuses its beam so narrowly on source code. The
LGPL has changed over time, in repeated attempts to address the
realities of code re-use in object-oriented languages.

Helen