Bug#219595: libffi2: Licensing problems

[Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de>]

Etienne Gagnon writes:
> Package: libffi2
> Version: 1:3.3.2-3
> Severity: serious
> Justification: Policy 2.3 Copyright considerations
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Libffi2 is supposed to be licensend under a very permissive license of
> the type "do whatever you want with the code"[0].  Yet, the build
> procedure of the Debian libffi2 source package make it impossible to
> build libffi2 *without* the GCC source code, which is licensed under
> the GNU GPL.  So, because of this direct dependency, the libffi2
> binary becomes a derivative work of GCC, and must then be licensed
> under the GPL, which can have unfortunate consequences on any
> non-GPL software that depends on libffi2 [SableVM comes to mind:-)].

why do you think it's derivative work? It's IMO clear, that libffi
comes with it's own license (fastjar as well). sure you can build
libffi without building gcc:

       cd libffi; ./configure; make

I don't see any RC bug here.

	Matthias