Ethics and Law of modified LGPL code deployment in a commercial software

Question

First bit of the question:

What are the legal requirements of LGPL code during the deployment of a commercial product?

• Software package should include LGPL licence file
• Anything else? Shall we add a line to our "software agreement text" where you need to click next in the installer ?

Second bit, Is there any known / accepted ways of distributing the changed library.

Since it's LGPL anything derived from it should be licenced under LGPL. But what about after that?

• Shall we just send a copy to the original author?
• Shall we put it in our website so people can download?
• Or ship the source code with the product?
• Or just put a note that saying "e-mail us for the source code of this library".

Answer 1

First thing, as always is check with your company lawyers.

If you are just linking to the unmodified library, then that is what the license is about; you don't need to do anything. If you are modifying it, then the license makes no stipulations about how the amended code should be made available -- any of the last 3 should be fine. If you are fixing rather than forking, then letting the author know would be an extra courtesy.

If there's an existing repository, then contributing to that would be a sensible idea.

Answer 2

I'll be referring to GPLv3 in all my replies. Ofcourse, where necessary, I'll bring up the additional clauses that the LGPL imposes (found here).

Anything else? Shall we add a line to our "software agreement text" where you need to click next in the installer ?

Copyright. Find the step-by-step instructions for applying GPL to your program here.

Shall we just send a copy to the original author?

As far as I know, there's no clause either in the GPL or LGPL requiring this. I'm not too sure about this though.

Shall we put it in our website so people can download?

Yes. However, if any of your customers would rather get the source on physical media by mail, you are required to provide that. Refer to sections 6(b) and 6(d) of GPL v3. See also this FAQ.