Re: GnuTLS in Debian

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org>]

Hi,

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Most upstream authors that I've spoken with don't believe that licensing
> crosses the shared library ABI boundary, that the shared OpenSSL library
> and the GPLv2 program that calls it remain separate works, and therefore
> there is no need for OpenSSL to meet the GPLv2 requirements since the
> binary as distributed is not a derivative work of both projects.  Instead,
> the projects are combined at runtime by the end user, who doesn't have to
> meet any redistributability requirements of either license.
>
> The FSF is a notable exception to this.

One can create a shim library implementing the interface that does
nothing and also provide headers stripped of comments (including
parameter names). Then one can use that shim headers and library to
create a program that uses the given interface.

However none of the copyrightable parts of the library in question were
used during this process, unless the interface was copyrightable. Does
the FSF believe this?

This is basically the other direction of what Wine or Samba do (they
reimplement the library given the interface).

Ansgar