Update: Wow, it's Charles' big day for being wrong about stuff. See also A moment of Reflection

Not only did I misread LGPL Section 6 once, I then went back and misread it a second time, and then a third time. Honest, I used to be able to read legalese. I studied Law for three years. I wasn't doing too badly at it until it started boring me to tears and I stopped going to classes.

My apologies to anyone I may have just slashdotted (except for Andy, who deserves it for calling me ‘Fishkopf’ all the time). They've never accepted any of my stories before...

I guess because none of the previous ones were flamebait :)

Update The following is basically wrong, see the comment, and just read the licence yourself, I'm obviously Not A Lawyer

Oh, and as an addendum, yes I know the wording of the article was exaggerated, and perhaps deliberately skirted the issue of what Section 6 involves. It also seems that Section 6 doesn't quite mean as much as I thought it did. I thought it meant that you had to open at least that portion of your program that interfaced with the library, but if you use an LGPL library in your program, your obligations are actually to:

1. Provide a written offer, valid for three years, that you will supply the source for the library to anyone you provide your program to.
2. If your program is downloadable, you must host the source for the library on the same site.
3. The licence for your own program must not prevent any user from reverse-engineering it and modifying it to use a modified version of the library.

These aren't particularly onerous, although (1) and (2) are quite annoying, but they are viral, in that they add obligations to anyone who distributes (or redistributes) software that relies on LGPL'd libraries.