[SDL] License question, also first question :)

[Gabriel Gambetta]

Hello! I've been using SDL for some time now, but I subscribed to the
mailing list today.

My apologies if this question has been answered millions of times. SDL
and other useful libraries (SDL_image, SDL_mixer) are released under
LGPL. As I understand it, I can't statically link my program to the
libraries unless my program is GPL. Is that correct?

My situation is this : although I *am* a supporter of open source (see
libz80.sourceforge.net or
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linmodem-HOWTO-5.html for example), in this
case I'm trying to make a small game and distributing it as shareware. I
can't release the code. Being a small game, distributing the DLLs impose
a considerable overhead to the download size. I'm using only a subset of
SDL_mixer, for example I'm loading only ogg files, so all the .XM code
isn't used. Statically linking would reduce the size of the download
since the unused object files won't be linked. I have a similar
situation with SDL_image - I'm only loading .bmp, .jpeg and .png. (in
this case is worse, since I can't statically link to zlib, libpng or
libjpeg either!)

Is there a way to do that? I've read somewhere that I can distribute my
object files, not my source files, and comply with the license.

Can somebody enlighten me in this topic?

Thanks a lot,
	--Gabriel

Lic. Gabriel Gambetta
ARTech - GeneXus Development Team
ggambett at artech.com.uy