Re: LGPL dictionaries in a proprietary application.

>>>>> "Sebastiaan" == Sebastiaan Visser <[email protected]> writes:

    Sebastiaan> Hello,

    Sebastiaan> I am working as a developer for a company that is
    Sebastiaan> creating a (proprietary) web based XML editor and I
    Sebastiaan> have been busy implementing a custom spell checker for
    Sebastiaan> this application. The only thing we need to get it
    Sebastiaan> working is a bunch of dictionary files.

    Sebastiaan> Because I am unable to figure out how to interpret the
    Sebastiaan> GNU Lesser General Public Licence for something other
    Sebastiaan> than source-code I decided to ask it directly at the
    Sebastiaan> aspell mailing list.

    Sebastiaan> Can we use the uncompressed aspell LGPL'ed dictionary
    Sebastiaan> files (the plain text wordlists) to compile them to
    Sebastiaan> our own format (with our own processor) and ship these
    Sebastiaan> compiled files with our proprietary application?

I doubt that this conforms to the LGPL, since apparently your mode of
operation does not allows users to compile their own files in your
format from future versions of the aspell dictionaries; this is IMHO
the key feature that identifies the LGPL. But to get a better
information you should ask to [email protected].

aspell dictionaries ARE source code: you compile them via aspell to
get wordlists (that are, in every sense, libraries). You further
process these libraries with your application, to obtain (proprietary)
libraries to be used with your application. 

Moreover each aspell dictionary has his own licence, that is not
always LGPL; sometimes it is GPL, sometimes it is a different
licence. You'll have to sort out the issue for every dictionary.

Carlo Traverso