Should I include LifecycleOwner in ViewModel?

Assumptions:

1. Fuel refers to your ViewModel
2. Fuel.request(IpAddressApi.MyIp()) is a method in your ViewModel
3. IpAddressApi.MyIp() does not have a reference to your LifecycleOwner,

If all are true,then you are not violating it. So long as you are not passing a LifecycleOwner reference to the ViewModel you are safe!

LifecycleOwner - relates to an Activity or Fragment as it owns the various Android Lifecycles e.g onCreate, onPause, onDestroy etc

No. If you wish to observe changes of some LiveData inside your ViewModel you can use observeForever() which doesn't require LifecycleOwner.

Remember to remove this observer on ViewModel's onCleared() event:

val observer = new Observer() {
  override public void onChanged(Integer integer) {
    //Do something with "integer"
  }
}

...

liveData.observeForever(observer);

...

override fun onCleared() {
    liveData.removeObserver(observer) 
    super.onCleared()
}

Very good reference with examples of observe LiveData.