Re: Question about RSA licence
Ludovic Rousseau <ludovic.rousseau@free.fr> wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote: [...]
> > Do opensc want to block gpgsm support?
>
> I guess not. That is not the intention.
>
> The OpenSC has a Credit page [1]. This page includes, without distinction,
> the licence(s) and the credits.
> [1] http://www.opensc.org/opensc/wiki/AuthorsAndCredits
>
> Should the OpenSC licence be a concatenation of the GNU LGPL and the RSA
> licence? Or can OpenSC be LGPL without any mention of the RSA licence?
The licence for OpenSC seems to be LGPL and the rsaref headers
have their own licence. LGPL section 10 includes the phrase
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients'
exercise of the rights granted herein" so the rsaref bits cannot
be LGPL. That's pretty much the same reasoning as for GPL in
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD
To answer your second question: No, OpenSC cannot be LGPL
without mentioning the RSA licence restriction, in my opinion.
To answer your first question: OpenSC source includes parts under
both licences. The compiled library cannot be LGPL.
I guess LGPL is also incompatible with BSD+advert licences. I
can't find a LGPL FAQ from FSF because they discourage LGPL use.
This all seems like deep crap, so I might be totally wrong.
Please sanity check it:
The extra bit of the LGPL is allowing authors of derived work to
use "terms of [their] choice" in section 6. We can't distribute
the compiled library as LGPL because it has the additional rsaref
credit requirement. Even if we distribute under other terms,
it can't be LGPL, so OpenSC does not allow modifications and
derived works to be distributed under the LGPL - the same terms
as the license of the original software - so flouts debian free
software guideline 3.
Suggested solutions:
I think first choice is junk rsaref in favour of something
under a GPL-compatible licence (damned if I can tell what: it
looks like it depends what functions are used). Second choice
is relicense opensc with all the work and consequences that
has. Do you agree?
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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