Re: LGPL and a proprietary application

[Hugues Talbot <Hugues.Talbot@csiro.au>]

Hi Vikas,

Caveat: I am not a lawyer, you should contact one if you have any doubt.

Vinaya is basically right in telling you to link with a shared library 
(DLL) version of pthread-win32, this puts you in the clear as far 
as the LGPL is concerned (section 6 allows specifically for that
case). The wording of section 5. of the license is not as clear cut if
you want to use a static version (.LIB version), therefore it is
not simple to answer your questions:

> 1) Is usage of a product like "pthreads-win32" forces us to release our
> source code or not. 

Generally, if you are not modifying the pthreads-win32 library or taking 
a significant portion of it in your own code (as in cutting-and-pasting 
some portion of the pthread-win32 source code), then you do not need
to release your source code. If you are modifying the pthreads-win32
library (say if you need to modify some internal parameters, or if you
fix a bug that you have found), you fall under the scope of the
LGPL and you must release at least your changes to the library, and 
possibly more (say if you added some significant enhancements to the library
to handle cases that it doesn't handle now, you would be required to
publish those, enough that others would be able to use them).

2) Next can we use it as per our with without intimating anyone.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You certainly cannot use pthreads-win32
as if it were your own code. Is that what you mean?


--------
Hugues Talbot, CSIRO Mathematical & Information Sciences
Locked Bag 17, Building E6B, Macquarie University  North Ryde  
NSW  2113  Australia           Ph: 61 2 9325 3208 Fax: 61 2 9325 3200

63% of all statistics are made up on the spot.