Re:Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
by newusertoday on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:19AM
(#42592863)
it is slightly more nuanced, if you do static linking it is considered derivative work and does requires you to open it. Since the app is based on ffmpeg which is GPL(core is LGPL) i am curious to know how it is getting used.
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Re:Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
by anshrathodfr on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:36AM
(#42592940)
i didn't bundle the ffmpeg in the app. It uses homebrew to install ffmpeg on the user's device. this is the acceptable way since ffmpeg confirms it on twitter/X.
Re:Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
by p4bl0 on Saturday January 04, 2025 @08:05AM
(#42594462)
This tweet also explicitly says "But still would be nice to have some credit.".
Why isn't FFmpeg mentioned on your app's website?
The same goes for ImageMagick by the way.
Re:Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
by anshrathodfr on Sunday January 05, 2025 @03:20AM
(#42600464)
there is a dedicated page for credits: https://pimosa.app/credits
Re:Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
by kiritanpo on Saturday January 04, 2025 @08:47AM
(#42594649)
Static linking of LGPL content (thus making it derivative work) only requires that it must allow "modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications".
Making your own code public is not the only way to achieve this.
You can also make available to customer object files and build instructions to recreate your software with the (modified) statically linked LGPL content. (if it's LGPL > 2.1 you have extra requirements: you need to provide all toolchains/dependencies and it must be actually possible to install a modified version on the hardware)
Granted, this is not commonly used but I've used this on some projects where dynamic linking was not available/desired by client.