> I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. There is no problem in statically > linking BSD with LGPL code as long as you redistribute the entire source > (BSD + LGPL parts) with your binary, right? So then it would not be the > linking or the license combination that's the problem, it becomes only a > problem is you redistribute without full source. Is that what you're after? >
It's a bit tricky. The linking is not the problem (it is perfectly fine to link BSD + LGPL code, as long as you provide the source). The tricky part is the license combination. If you combine LGPL and BSD code (either by static linking, or by actually incorporating LGPL code into a BSD codebase), then you can no longer claim it is under the BSD license -- it is now entirely under the LGPL (much the same as what would happen with GPL). Thus, you are still allowed to distribute it, but the fact that the license has changed may be an unintended consequence, especially if a large BSD project included a tiny amount of LGPL, it would be pretty weird to have to change the entire project's license. In practice, this means BSD projects should treat GPL/LGPL code in the same way proprietary projects do: Stay away from GPL code entirely, and only link to LGPL code dynamically. BSD projects, unlike proprietary ones, *can* get away with statically linking to LGPL code (the source is still BSD, but the end product is LGPL), *but* it would mean that any proprietary code derived from the BSD project would need to remove the statically-linked LGPL code, so in practice it is best for BSD-licensed code to avoid statically linking with LGPL code. (And the same reasoning applies for linking to GPL at all.) Maybe it's not worth mentioning it and it can be dealt with if the problem ever arises. Also not a lawyer.
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