"Marcin Owsiany" <porridge@debian.org> wrote in message [🔎] 20071204092130.GA2468@beczulka">news:[🔎] 20071204092130.GA2468@beczulka...
[0] My explanation of the problem || I had a look at the COPYING file in the root of PSI source tree [1], which,| due to lack of any more specific licensing information seems to be the | binding license for the icons. It is GPL with two special exceptions. || Since the icons are built directly into ekg2's gtk plugin, their license | effectively limits what the plugin may be linked against. In particular, | PSI's license only allows to link the software it covers (i.e. the icons as | well) against OpenSSL via Qt or QCA plugin APIs, which ekg2 does not use.
Hmm... I suppose this is valid, although it does seem a bit of a strech to call the graphics linked to the openSSL library, it does seem to be basically the case.
| This raises "Ye Olde GPL vs OpenSSL issue" [2]. || Since the gtk plugin is linked (indirectly, via ekg2 and other plugins) to | OpenSSL library, this makes the binary package illegal to distribute for| Debian, according to its more or less official position. [3] || I am by no means an expert, but think there are two potential ways around| this problem. || 1) relicense the icons, to a more permissive license (i.e. add another | exception). This might be the easiest way or impossible, depending on the| copyright holders' position.
That is definately possible. the LGPL is a good choice here if a copyleft on the images is highly desired. (Obviously the LGPL is compatible with GPL linking exceptions). Otherwise, I would suggest the Expat licence.
| 2) change gtk plugin's code to load the icons at runtime, rather have them| built directly into the binary.
That would certainly work. There is definately no need for the icons to be linked to the OpenSSL library. There is no problems with a GPL'ed program using non-GPLed graphics file, or a non-gpl program using GPL'ed graphics files (although admittedly some people would not be happy about this). So certainly there is no need to worry about possible licence conflicts in this case.
| Please also note that this problem now affects ekg (1), as the gtk UI code| was recently added to it. ||[1]. http://dev.psi-im.org/websvn/filedetails.php?repname=Psi&path=%2Ftrunk%2FCOPYING|[2]. http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html |[3]. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/10/msg00113.html
IANADD. IANAL.