With regards to libiconv, which I don't know if Unity iOS builds use it, there is a BSD implementation of it, which is almost certainly the case also with what iOS uses.
I can't speak to the work the author of this blogpost did with regards to investigating the usage of the specific LGPL libraries. The specific examples specified would all make sense as strictly used by the Editor.
My opinion is that if you are looking for wholesale license violations by giant corporations like Unity, libraries are the wrong place. Huge corporations launder license violations by line-by-line rewriting the code and pretending their implementation is original.
However, even if Unity is not using those libraries in the iOS runtime but does use them somewhere else, that still seems that they were arbitrary in their enforcement of the rules, since the VLC packages mentioned here were not being distributed for iOS at all. So they were certainly not using LGPL on iOS either.
I'd also mention that I'm not claiming that Unity is breaking the LGPL. I'm rather more of the opinion that distributing LGPL apps for iOS is not in contradiction with any of the terms of the LGPL, and that Unity thinks so as well.
Ultimately I sympathize with the author, and this is not meant to pass a subjectively negative judgement, I know the author didn't unpack a Unity iOS IPA and carefully check if any of the libraries are definitively LGPL and if they were definitively not cross licensed, that would be a waste of his time.
> distributing LGPL apps for iOS is not in contradiction with any of the terms of the LGPL
I don't want to make the author of the LGPL, who is commenting in this thread, regret commenting. There's a phrase he uses that makes it clear to me what its intent is, "right to repair." It comes down to whether or not you think it's impracticable to replace a library in an iOS app. For the average user it obviously is.
Is it practicable for sophisticated users? You can probably get the app bundle, replace a .dylib in an embedded Framework, resign it, and use the app bundle on your development enrolled device. But then you will lose a lot of functionality, like push notifications and IAP. And ad serving will also probably stop working. So my opinion is: no. You can't distribute LGPL libraries in iOS apps.
The article doesn't mention iOS or Apple even once, they in fact mention they only had assets for Windows, UWP and Android as three different packages, so everyone here thinking Unity is blocking the packages because of iOS has completely missed the context.
