Question

Most of you know that the main purpose of Open Source libraries' licensing is to distribute the source code along with your application.

Well - commercially this still applies - regardless if it's GPL or LGPL. Not that I know extremely much about it's tweaks or rules - that's why I'm asking here.

However - I personally wish to keep some code closed source. My question is:

If I do use an external open source library (which I'll gladly release the code)

&

it will import functions from a closed source DLL - (definitions only)

does that mean I'm allowed to NOT distribute my DLL's code?

Was it helpful?

Solution

You could use GNU's LGPL.

From Wikipedia:

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The LGPL allows developers and companies to use and integrate LGPL software into their own (even proprietary) software without being required (by the terms of a strong copyleft) to release the source code of their own software-parts.

(Emphasis mine).

And here is a link to the GNU LGPL official page.

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