Guillaume Marcais wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 18:26, Jim Cain wrote:
> 
>>Sam Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>Quoteing kubo / jiubao.org, on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 04:33:35PM +0900:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Jim Cain <list / jimcain.us> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>Just reading this excerpt, I notice the sentence:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library
>>>>>> together in an executable that you distribute.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>My library and the Oracle client library will not be distributed 
>>>>>>together. It is up to the user of my library to acquire and install the 
>>>>>>Oracle client library.
>>>
>>>
>>>But if your DBD is used by somebody to build an application for a client,
>>>and that somebody delivers to their client ruby, the oracle DBD, their
>>>ruby code, and the Oracle9i libraries (an entire working application),
>>>then that somebody will have broken this licence, even though you
>>>haven't (you can't, actually, because you wrote the code, you'd have to
>>>prosecute yourself, and I *hope* that no court would hear the case if
>>>you tried :-).
>>>
>>>Sam
>>>
>>
>>True, but I wonder if this statement gives you an out:
>>
>>    Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library
>>    together in an executable that you distribute.
>>
>>They would not be distributed "together in an executable", the key word 
>>being "an." They would be distributed together as *separate libraries.* 
>>I suppose it would depend on the legal interpretation of "together in an 
>>executable."
> 
> 
> I am not a specialist of law by any mean. But here, just reading the
> sentence, I would say that 'distribute' applies only to the executable,
> not the libraries. Meaning that you cannot use the two libraries in your
> software, wether they were distributed together or not.
> 
> Guillaume.
> 

In the case of distribution, you have at least three entities that are 
relevant here: the DBD library, the OCI library and the executable that 
uses these two libraries. The executable may use other libraries as 
well; that may or may not be important here.

It appears to me that the LGPL considers the executable to be separate 
from the LGPL-licensed library, *until it is running*, in which case it 
is a combined work within the scope of the license. It is not clear to 
me whether this includes dynamic linking, but to be conservative I have 
to assume that it does.

What I want to accomplish with licensing terms is to apply a GPL-style 
license to my library only, meaning that the library itself must always 
remain open, including any modifications. I would like to modify a copy 
of the LGPL, deleting the sections that apply the license to the 
combined, running executable, but since the LGPL itself is copyrighted 
and even says "changing it is not allowed," I'm not sure I can do this.