Take the 2-minute tour ×

If I want to make a commercial application with PySide, how can I distribute my application and meet the LGPL 2.1 requirement that the application must be “re-linkable” against a modified version of the Library?

I'd like to compile my application into a single exe file with PyInstaller. However, doing this prevents a user from modifying the LGPL parts. The best solution I can think of is to include the following dll and pyd files that get used:


Surprisingly I can't find any discussion about this related to PySide. I'd like to hear how people use PySide in there applications.

share|improve this question
I don't have a solution to your problem but, simply including the pyside libs in a directory next to your application doesn't allow the end user to modify the libs and reuse them in your application (because your application doesn't know about them) –  vikki Jan 14 '13 at 6:43
In the one-folder mode, those files and a whole bunch of others are in the same folder as the exe and modifiable. To clarify, I meant building the app in such a way with PyInstaller so that everything is bundled into the exe except those files. I'm not sure if it's possible to do what I want with one-file mode, so might have to resort to one folder mode. –  andy Jan 14 '13 at 19:10

1 Answer 1


Well, release your application in a way that it is technically possible to rebuild the .exe file (e.g. with PyInstaller) while being able to replace the LGPL'ed component with a modified one.

Only because you release your applications sources must not mean that you have released it under LGPL as well. Just make clear which part falls under LGPL and which not.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


