[License-discuss] [FTF-Legal] Reverse Engineering and Open Source Licenses

[David Woolley]

On 06/03/15 09:09, Reincke, Karsten wrote:
> Why do I only say ‘very similar’ instead of ‘equal’. The problem with your summary is this: you do not talk about the license text! Your term “combined work” DOES NOT OCOUR in

The problem with your approach is that you do not talk about the spirit 
of the licence.

I believe the intent is that you should have access to enough 
information to be able to modify the LGPLed parts and still have a 
working piece of software.  If it turns that you have tightened the 
interface specification for the LGPLed work, and that breaks the 
composite work, you must have right to use invasive debuggers to 
discover in what way the proprietary work is now no longer compatible.

What I think you are doing is looking for mistakes in the drafting, to 
help you defeat the spirit of the licence, although I also think you are 
doing so on a misunderstanding of how much information the user is 
actually required to be allowed to access.

I should point out that the authors of the licence discourage its use, 
because they believe that it is almost always better to work with the 
full GPL.