Licensing issues...

[Robert Ribnitz <ribnitz@linuxbourg.ch>]

Hello List,

I am in the process of making my package ('htdig') lintian-clean. Part 
of that cleanness (lintian does not complain about) is getting a summary 
of all the licenses used into the copyright file.

My situation is as follows (for htdig 3.1.6):

htdig itself is GPL, more recent versions are LGPL
config.guess/config.sub is GPL
Berkley DB (v. 2.6.4) comes with a sleepycat license (4-clause BSD 
style), the current sleepycat license is a 3-clause BSD-style license.
They extended Berkeley DB in some way, I guess those extensions are 
BSD-style, hopefully a 3 clause one.

Here's my set of questions:

1) Can I assume the more recent 3-clause BSD to also apply to that 
version of Berkeley DB, or am I bound by the 4 clause one?
2) Can I reasonably argue that htdig is gpl (or lgpl) if its linked 
against a 3 or a 4 cloause BSD license? - htdig .3.1.6 builds static 
libraries (.a) it links against.

In thope to not to be completely off-topic here

Robert Ribnitz
Debian Maintainer  of htdig, NM in application.