Re: [libgpiod][PATCH V9 0/8] libgpiod: Add Rust bindings

[Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 11:29 AM Bartosz Golaszewski <brgl@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> One other thing is the license of the rust bindings themselves - I'm
> not a lawyer but it seems to me that if you link against LGPL code
> statically, your code must be licensed under an LGPL-compatible
> license.

Nope. The LGPL was created exactly for clarifying and avoiding that
situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License

It is a common misunderstanding that GPL overall has anything to do
with whether you link things this or that way, the legal term used is
"derivative work" and the meaning of that can only be determined in
court. The meaning can depend on the intent of the author and misc
legal ramifications.

In many ways LGPL is unnecessary, but it was created exactly to make
non-legal people less weary about situations relating to linking of
libraries.

It is fine to link an LGPL statically into whatever software, but one needs
to provide header files and linkable static objects (.a files) of the library
to the user.

Yours,
Linus Walleij