Hello, I work for a company that is interested in using NHibernate in our closed-source commercial product. However, our legal department is nervous about using NHibernate because they are concerned its usage will affect our product license. We are not modifying the NHibernate source, but we do want to a) statically link to the NHibernate.dll (e.g., reference NHibernate.dll from our .NET solution) and b) extend NHibernate classes and implement NHibernate interfaces.
I understand in order for us to include NHibernate in our commercial product, we need to ensure that any client using our product must be able to upgrade to a new NHibernate version if they so desire. The safest way for us to comply to this LGPL regulation seems to be for us to dynamically bind to the NHibernate.dll (using the Assembly.load function). This way, if clients want to upgrade to a new NHibernate version, they could potentially drop-in a new NHibernate.dll and restart the application. As long as the interface hasn’t changed, no run-time errors should occur. However, if at all possible, we do not want to dynamically bind to NHibernate for various reasons. This brings me to my questions: 1) If a solution statically references the NHIbernate.dll, is it possible to upgrade to a new version of the NHibernate.dll without rebuilding the solution? Let’s assume that nothing in the new version has changed that would cause run-time or compile errors in the existing solution. Could we simply drop-in the new NHibernate.dll into the relevant directory and restart the application, or is the application bound to the original version number of the NHibernate.dll? 2) Can we statically reference the NHibernate.dll and extend/implement NHibernate classes in our closed-source commercial product, without violating the terms of the LGPL? Again, we are not modifying the NHibernate source. We do not want our product license to be affected by the product’s usage of NHibernate. I’ve seen numerous threads about this issue in this forum, but I can’t seem to find a definitive official answer. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thank you! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nhusers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nhusers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
