Re: Bug#147668: base-files: please include the OpenSSL license
On Tue, 21 May 2002, Jeff Licquia wrote:
> - The advertising clause
> - The "cannot relicense under any other license, including the GPL"
> clause, which appears to forbid binary linking under the GPL section 2
> (through the terms of section 3).
[...]
> > part of the base OS, or should it be required ? (to qualify for the escape
> > clause in the GPL)
>
> The problematic clause in the GPL is "unless that component itself
> accompanies the executable." (section 3) If "Debian" is defined as
> "main", then OpenSSL "accompanies" anything else in main.
Exactly. You have hit all the three nails right on the head.
For OS distributors, there is no escape clause. Either your GPL'ed code is
explicitly under a modified GPL license that allows linking to OpenSSL, or
you are illegal goods for a OS distributor.
This means you are out of Debian, and even out of non-free.
You cannot even have the GPL-that-uses-OpenSSL-without-license-change debs
anywhere in debian.org, any ftp/website that also carries Debian's OpenSSL
packages, cdroms that carry Debian's OpenSSL packages, or in the same
cardbox in the store's shelf. If you want to be anal-retentively correct
about it, at least.
That's all folks. That's the de-facto official standing. If you are going to
bother challenging that, you must go to debian-legal, and convince everyone
there that you are right. Bring a lawyer with you, too, or don't bother
even showing up.
If this is a problem for you, either get upstream to relicense the code to
use a modified GPL that explicitily allows linking to OpenSSL (which usually
is quite easy to do), or port the code to use other crypto library.
Blaming this on the GPL, or the OpenSSL license would be pointless. All we
can do is pick up the pieces. Now, back to the scheduled flamewars...
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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