I created a program based on an LGPL project, and I'm not allowed to publish the source code

Posted by Dave on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Dave
Published on 2011-05-17T20:25:22Z Indexed on 2012/04/02 11:42 UTC
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licensing

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lgpl

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closed-source

I thought LGPL was a permissive license, just like MIT, BSD or Apache. But today I read, that only linking to LGPL (libraries etc) is allowed from closed-source code - other than that, it's copyleft - so I have to publish code that is based on an LGPL program.

I created a program for my employer that is based on an LGPL program, but has considerable modifications to it. Of course, I am not allowed to put that modified source code out there. At the same time, I have to, if I distribute it (right?).

So I wonder whether there is a workaround to this, so I can keep this closed-source (I wish I could publish the source) - any suggestions?

My idea: can I put most functions of the original LGPL app into an external library, write the core executable from scratch, but refer back to the library for all functions that I haven't modified?

Currently, everything is in a .jar file (it's Java/Swing). if you think my idea is legally/technically feasible - how much effort would it be to seperate what I wrote and what the original is? I'm not the most java savvy.

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