Both inih and dunst are BSD licensed.

See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libraries#Exceptions
and please provide answers to the list of standard questions there.

In practical terms, not answering those satisfactorily will mean your exception request will likely be denied.

Also, I see on the review request that the reviewer said that since the library was small there was a good chance that it would be approved. This is not necessarily the case.

Some information:
Current inih code in the dunst tarball is either a snapshot from Jan 2012 or the r17 release in Mar 2012. Since then, upstream has released r22 on Aug 26 and r23 on Oct 1
The library has not been modified from the original upstream code

There could be a chance that this could be considered a copylib since the inih webpage mentions that it is good for embedded systems and doesn't provide a Makefile. However, in cases like this we usually start by asking that the packager contact the library upstream to see if they'll take patches to build as a library (even a static library is better than a bundled library for our purposes and static libs are easy to build).

If there's no cooperation from upstream, I'd currently lean towards building inih separately as a static lib and linking dunst to that. With cooperation from upstream, building inih as a shared library becomes possible.

Ok first of all I will try to ask upstream to include a Makefile I have just prepared (static library).

http://code.google.com/p/inih/issues/detail?id=24

My patch was accepted upstream, therefore I am going to create new package inih-static and use it in the dunst. Please correct me if my plans are not correct and close the issue than. Thanks for help with the process.

Thanks! That looks like it will be fine to be used under the existing static libraries exception.