software licensing
Mitigating software license incompatibility
<p>I am currently developing a piece of software which utilises open source software licensed under LGPL (specifically, I'm using FFMPEG). </p>

<p>I need to include a piece of paid software in my project which has its own license. The license of the paid software states that users are not permitted to reverse engineer the software (which applies to my project as a result). See section 1.3.1 of the license agreement quoted below.</p>

<p>This clause conflicts with the LGPL license. I would ideally like to have a situation whereby I can use FFMPEG and this paid software in the same software package without conflict.</p>

<p><strong>Is there any way of circumventing this conflict?</strong> It has been suggested that the paid software licensor could resell their license to each of my software users...but I feel this is not a good approach since (a) it adds to the cost of my software (b) it's a further contact/step/license for my clients to use my software. Preferably there would just be one license to cover the whole software package, as it is at the moment. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>1.3.1 License Grant. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You are granted a limited, nontransferable, royalty-free license to redistribute and sublicense the use of the Programs solely to Authorized End-Users: in object code form only; (ii) as embedded within Your Integrated Product for internal company use, hosted applications, websites, commercial solutions deployed at Your Authorized End Users sites, or shrink- or click-wrapped software solutions; and (iii) pursuant to an end user license agreement or terms of use that: imposes the limitations set forth in this paragraph on Your Authorized End-Users; prohibits distribution of the Programs by Your Authorized End-Users; limits the liability of Your licensors or suppliers to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law; and prohibits any attempt to disassemble the code, or attempt in any manner to reconstruct, discover, reuse or modify any source code or underlying algorithms of the Programs, except to the limited extent as is permitted by law notwithstanding contractual prohibition.  Notwithstanding subsection 1.3.1(iii), if the only Authorized End-Users of Your Integrated Product are Your employees and such use is internal and solely for Your benefit, You are not required to utilize an end user license agreement or terms of use. In no event are You allowed to distribute the Software or sublicense its use in any format other than in object form, as a standalone product, or as a part of any product other than Your Integrated Product.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If the Programs means the software you bought, then you can keep the licenses separate.  You use the LGPL software as a shared library under the LGPL.  Provide the source code under the rules of the LGPL.  The commercial stuff (Programs) needs to be in a separate file under the EULA they require.  There are few restrictions on Your Integrated Product, which includes the LGPL stuff.</p>
