Re: Netatalk and SSL
Stephen Gran <sgran@debian.org> writes:
> Can you provide a pointer to the discussion? I am curious to read it,
> if possible. Of course, if it's just in one of your mbox's, don't worry
> about it.
Just in mbox.
>> The fact that this is transitive linking means that it is perfectly
>> legal to distribute gnucash *source*.
>
> ENOPARSE, sorry. I can't imagine how it _could_ affect the source,
> since the source doesn't link to anything - it's just a build system and
> source code.
You cannot distribute GPL'd source which has been modified to link to
a GPL-incompatible library when the only way the source would be
useful is if it is, in fact, linked to that library.
>> It doesn't affect the binaries at all.
>
> Again, parse problem. What is 'it' in this context?
"It" is the fact that the linking is transitive rather than direct.
> I thought that I had read somewhere that the standard advice for making
> a non-free application talk to a GPL library was through a 'shim'
> library, so that the symbols aren't loaded together in a non-free/GPL
> incompatible application.
Except, they *are* loaded together.
Making "shim" libraries does not change the licensing rules at all,
which for the GPL, apply to the complete program.
In the present case, the GPL v3 is expected to solve the problem,
because GPL v3 will allow Debian to take advantage of the "system
libraries" exception. But that is many many months away.
Thomas
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