Re: Netatalk and OpenSSL licencing
* Freek Dijkstra <debian_public@macfreek.nl> [040809 13:42]:
> 2. Is the netatalk upstream author correct that he cannot reasonably make
> the exception (without asking all possible contributors)
Not if he want to still use code for which he only has GPL as licence
allowing him to incorporate it.
> PS: to play the devils advocate on this list: is this !@#&$(%$ really
> necessary for me as an end-user to get open-source software to work? I'd
> rather had spend all this time doing something *useful*.
Well, free software is normaly built upon taking copyright very
seriously. Be it from the "we have to subvert copyright by copyleft
to abolish it" or from the "author's rights are human rights, but I
will allow anyone to benefit from my software if they behave well
w.r.t. ..." camp, each leads to care about the exact rights you
get much more than making propietary software.
And now there is a amount of programmers who allowed their code be
used under GPL. Many won't care, many would explicitly allow when
asked, but they all contributed - formaly seen - under a licence
normaly considered to demand all of the program to not "impose
any furhter restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
granted herein".
And as the number of people who dislike those parts of the OpenSSL
licence causing problems is inot negligible, it is likely that there
are people who intended what they perhaps did, to disallow derived
versions having such restrictions in them.
So there is this demand not to mix with OpenSSL, that some might even
have intended. Legally there remains the question if the GPL is
enforcable with respect to dynamic linking, but disrespecting
peoples wishes what should happen with their code due to problems
in the licence is still dangerous style.
Yes, this situation sucks. I really wished it would vanish soon
by common usage of gnutls. I hope the change to LGPL was not too
late to finaly see some solution in the future.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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