Re: Plugins, libraries, licenses and Debian

[Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>]

mru@kth.se (Måns Rullgård) writes:

> What I'm trying to find out is, whether or not it's allowed to write a
> plugin, using GPL,d libraries, for a program with MIT license, for
> which there also exists plugins using OpenSSL (or anything
> GPL-incompatible).

If you want a simply answer, the answer is: "No (insert disclaimers
here)" as others have pointed out.

The rest of the discussion is only appropriate if you want to understand
why that is.  But it has to do with intent, sneaky ways one might try to
get around the GPL, how provable your position is in court, and (perhaps
most importantly) how deep your pockets are.

> While on the subject of intent, was it ever the intention of anyone to
> disallow programs using both readline and OpenSSL?  Or did they just
> happen to formulate their licenses in incompatible ways?

That's like asking if it was my intention for a ball to hit the ground
when I told you to drop it.

No, OpenSSL folks aren't (to my knowledge) all that concerned about
whether their code can link with GPL works (e.g., readline).  But, as
their license states, they do want an advertisement to accompany their
code, and any derived work.

GPL works' authors don't generally care specifically about OpenSSL
either.  But they *don't* want advertisements to accompany their code,
or any derived work.

So when you get a derived work that contains both of these restrictions,
it ought to be quite clear that there's no way to meet it.  Since you
can't, you can't distribute.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03