LGPL and a commercial cartridge release

[dogruis]

Hi Damien,

I’m working on Legend of Thorn, a platformer that runs on ngdevkit, and I’d like to eventually release it on a real cartridge and sell it. Before going further, I want to make sure I respect the license.

If I read the LGPL-3.0 correctly, the cartridge contains statically linked ngdevkit code: nullsound in the M-ROM, and libngdevkit (crt0, BIOS calls) in the P-ROM. In that case, on top of the notice and the ngdevkit sources, I’d have to give buyers the game’s object files so they could relink it against a modified ngdevkit. I’m fine with the notice and with publishing any changes I make to nullsound, but I’d rather not distribute the game’s objects.

A few questions:

Is that how you see the LGPL applying to a game ROM?
Would you be open to a linking exception for the runtime and nullsound (along the lines of the GCC Runtime Library Exception), or to giving permission for commercial releases? Have you ever considered an MIT license for the runtime and nullsound?

Cheers,

Ismaïl