On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 02:08:01AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 07:06:36PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > > > > The license of the GNUTLS OpenSSL shim is GPL, causing possible license > > problems in the other direction with GPL-incompatible apps. It's also not a > > very complete compatibility layer. > Could the kadmin program be considered a derived work of the readline > library? No, because it was written to call libss *years* ago, long > before libss was modified to potentially call the readline library. I'm not sure this is the right list for this, but... (If you decide that I need learnin', and take this to another list, please CC me. ^_^) Surely the above statement (out of context) is actually an expected side-effect of Copyleft? Specifically, if you drag something GPL into your library, you _are_ requiring that all users (even the historical ones) be GPL-compatible, or not use that version of the library. Obviously kadmin is not a directly derived work of readline, but it is a derived work of libss, which is _now_ a derived work of readline. (Or would be, barring the dlopen solution. ^_^) This of course assumes the phrase "derived work" is legalese for "code dependancy" or something. I'm sure the GPL actually defines what _they_ mean by it... On the other hand, I agree the dlopen-interface argument below trumps this, but I would have to go re-read the GPL before I relied upon that myself. > The kadmin program called the libss *interface*, and at the time the > author of the kadmin program had no idea that it might subsequently > end up calling a GPL'ed library indirectly via libss. And > furthermore, the BSD-licensed libss program does not even directly > link against the readline library, but rather uses dlopen() and > dlsym() to call a particular *interface* which could be satisified > either by a GPL or BSD licensed library. So how can you say that the > libss program is a derivitive work of either library? -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE 8th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) Paul.Hampson@Anu.edu.au "No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder?" -- Capt. Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean" This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. -----------------------------------------------------------
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