What does GNU Lesser General Public License allow?

[Martin]

Hi.

I'm creating a wrapper library for Basic4Android to allow use of
OSMDroid in Basic4Android applications.
Basic4Android currently has no MapView support so this will be an
important feature update for the language.

http://www.basic4ppc.com/index.html

My problem is that the library often needs to create an OSMDroid
object with a default constructor and the OSMDroid object has no
default constructor.

I've worked around this by wrapping the OSMDroid object in a wrapper
and all works fine but as the library is geting more complex i am
wrapping wrappers in wrappers and things are not looking very elegant.

A simple solution that works is to take the source code for a OSMDroid
object that has no default constructor and add a default constructor.
This works perfectly but my attention got drawn to the terms of the
GNU LGPL licence.

From what i understand, what i'm doing is not allowed!

I found this year old thread on the group:

http://groups.google.com/group/osmdroid/browse_thread/thread/7afa3bccb986a49d

That doesn't really answer what i want to know though.

Let's say i've recompiled the source for ItemizedOverlayWithFocus to
add a default constructor - that's not allowed.
(I'm also adding setter methods to enable the ballon background color
to be set and will add more setter methods to enable user
customisation of the balloon).

I'm free to write my own custom equivalent of ItemizedOverlayWithFocus
- but where to draw the line between my version and the original
version of ItemizedOverlayWithFocus?

As all programmers know - the best way to learn is from looking at
other peoples' code!!!

If i take the source and make changes then at what point does the new
ItemizedOverlayWithFocus become my work and the GNU LGPL licence no
longer apply?

Any constructive thought or comments welcomed.

Thanks.

Martin.