LGPL, purchasing product that links or modifies libraries under LGPL

[Ben Tilly]

2010/12/9 Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no>:
> Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com> writes:
>> The answer to both cases is that as long as the source code is
>> distributed to you in addition to the binary, all source
>> responsibilities are trivially satisfied.
>
> I'm not even sure this counts as distributon, since the software in
> question is work for hire.

I believe that whether or not it counts as a work for hire depends on
facts we haven't seen.  If the people who did the work retain
copyright to what they have done and the right to resell their work to
someone else, then it is not a work for hire.  Many consultants and
contractors do this even for custom development projects so that they
can build up private libraries that they can reuse in future
contracts.

Of course if it is a work for hire, then the legal situation is even
better.  But at that point we are just coming up with more reasons why
they are OK.  However even so, getting the source to the software
makes perfect sense.