Including LGPL libraries in your software and not getting sued

[Levit]

CONTEXT
After some time of frustration with the UX of some existing Windows apps out there for quick media editing, I saw a potential value skew, but I mostly wanted to solve my own problem. So I started designing a basic app that I'd like to sell.
The thing is, I'm not a 10X low-level native app dev. I just do web development, so I have to make do with frameworks like Electron and libraries for editing the video, like FFMPEG.
So the first issue is that FFMPEG falls under an LGPL licence (Lesser General Public License), and I don't have any experience in navigating how to commercially distribute software that makes use of a library under LGPL.

TL;DR
I'm making a commercial native app and want to include a library that is under an LGPL licence. What steps do I need to take to avoid legal issues?


I asked ChatGPT to simplify it for me, and it said the following:

1. The LGPL allows developers to use and integrate LGPL-licensed software into their own, even if the latter is proprietary, without being required to release the source code of their own software parts. But any changes made to the LGPL-licensed software itself must be released under the same LGPL license.
2. If you use LGPL-licensed software (like a library) in your program, you can keep your program proprietary, meaning you don't have to release your source code. This is the key difference from the GPL, which requires derivative works also to be licensed under the GPL.
3. LGPL-licensed software must be allowed to be reverse-engineered to debug any modifications.

Now that sounds somewhat encouraging, but I'm 1. not sure if I can trust AI here and 2. not 100% sure how to execute on that.
I don't think I'll be modifying FFMPEGs code whatsoever, so does that mean I can simply like to FFMPEG original source code and not have to provide my own apps source code?

It says, "LGPL-licensed software must be allowed to be reverse-engineered to debug any modification"...so I'm not sure about this one, if my commercial app isn't LGPL then technically, I shouldn't have to allow people to reverse-engineer it, should I?

What's even more confusing is that FFMPEG itself seems to fall under LGPL 2.1 and the Node package I wanted to use ffmpeg-static falls under LGPL 3.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Perhaps I'm overthinking it.

 

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[Levit]

Seeing as no one replied to this, I'll update this post with what I found out just in case anyone else has the same question.
So, LGPL means you can link to it via a linker, but if you modify that library's code, you have to publish your modifications or donate them back.

GPL means you must distribute your code even if all you do is link to the library. However, if you never link it in and only run it as an external program via an HTTP interface or some kind of networking, then you only have to distribute your changes to that GPL project, not your own code.

That's why Amazon and all those companies can take a GPL project and sell it in the cloud. That's where the AGPL comes in, and that says, even if you talk to it over the network, you have to release your code. IIRC, it even says it can only talk to other AGPL projects, and anything not AGPL must be released.