Re: GPL and OpenSSL in libs3
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 03:31:29PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > 1) If the library is conditionally compilable against either
> > curl+openssl or curl+gnutls, only dynamically links against either
> > (neither the library nor user executables would directly reference
> > openssl or its symbols), and doesn't make direct use of the library
> > (the aforementioned crypto primitives can be replaced with public
> > domain reference implementations), wouldn't this be sufficient to make
> > the library's users not derivative works of openssl, and thus allow
> > ordinary GPL code to link?
> That needs to depend on the "system library" clause in the GPL for
> libssl, and libssl isn't considered a system library in Debian as far as
> I understand.
libssl is a system library; the system library clause in GPLv2 can only
unambiguously be used by software which is /not/ distributed as part of the
system itself.
In GPLv3 the wording is different but the conclusion is the same; the FSF
doesn't mean for OpenSSL to get an exception by default.
--
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Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
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