Is it mandatory to obtain a licence for distributing software uses bundled Mono runtime?

Question

My software composed of an EXE and dependent class library dlls, built on Windows using visual studio C# Compiler. I've been able to run it directly on Mac OS X using mono myApp.exe without rebuilding.

Now, for the deployment, I've successfully made mono bundle using mkbundle with --deps option for all dependent class library assemblies. But I did NOT use --static option. So my application dynamically links to mono and glib.

Wrapped it inside mac APP bundle, then copied the needed libmono-[XYZ].dylib , and all other dependent native libs from Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework into that bundle, changing each dylib id and install name to be the copy insde the bundle rather than original in Mono.framework directory.

Tested the M bundle in a mono free machine. the bundle worked perfectly.

My question is, do I still need to obtain a license from Xamarin to distribute my application to end users under my proprietary license, provided that all mono native runtime libraries are in the App bundle and the user can update/replace them as per LGPL license of mono runtime?

Thanks!

Answer 1

As far as I'm aware, as you state that you're complying with the LGPL terms, then you don't need a licence from Xamarin.

However if you're going to deploy your app to the Mac appStore, LGPL is incompatible with it, so then you need to licence your app as proprietary or MIT/BSD, and to be able to do this you would need a Xamarin license (because AFAIK those licences are not compatible with the LGPL; but IANAL). But maybe we're just talking about some bucks, which is how much the Xamarin.Mac licence costs.

UPDATE: It's very likely that this answer is not valid anymore since the moment Microsoft acquired Xamarin, since one of the conditions for the deal is to make Mono completely MIT, and then there's no need to deal again with crappy licensing.