On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 07:50:00PM +0200, Gregor Hoffleit wrote: > * Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> [020504 19:30]: > > I believe this is only an issue if we also ship python programs that > > use both modules. It may be the case that we do; but simply having both > > python modules available on the system is not a license conflict, and > > end-users are even allowed to write programs using both modules; they > > just can't be distributed with Debian without some resolution to the > > above issue. > > If we don't ship any python programs that depend on both SSL socket > > support and readline support, I believe providing a non-SSL-enabled > > socket module as the preferred socket module will satisfy the license > > requirements. If we have programs that do need both SSL and readline, > > then something needs to be changed -- either readline must be replaced > > with editline, or OpenSSL must be replaced with gnutls. > Well, if you do this: > freefly:46> python2.1 > Python 2.1.3 (#1, Apr 20 2002, 10:14:34) > [GCC 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2 > Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. > >>> import socket > then both readline and OpenSSL are linked into the Python interpreter. But a user is within her rights to do that. Creating a program that loads both of these libraries is allowed -- distributing it in Debian is not. > Now the question seems to be if distributing a package that allows this > is in violation of the GPL. Distributing a package that *does* this is in violation of the GPL; that is, we cannot legally distribute a python script that calls both 'import socket' and 'import readline'. But we allow users to do many things that we ourselves cannot: a user is free to create such a script on his local machine, and he is free to call 'import socket' from the python IDE. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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