Re: Bacula: GPL and OpenSSL
John Goerzen writes:
> Kern approached me about this situation (see full correspondence below,
> forwarded with his permission). He added that Bacula does not
> statically link with OpenSSL, that OpenSSL support can be disabled at
> build time, and that FSFE does not believe that an exception clause to
> the GPL is necessary to legally link to OpenSSL in the manner that
> Bacula is (dynamic linking). Further, could we not consider OpenSSL to
> be a major component of the OS on which the executable runs, and thus
> fall under that exemption in the GPL anyway?
>
> I have not been able to pull up a succinct statement of why Debian
> believes this is a problem when FSFE doesn't, or what we ought to do.
> Can somebody please comment on the OpenSSL linking issue when OpenSSL is
> only dynamically linked?
Debian generally distributes OpenSSL logically near the packages that
dynamically link against it, so the major system component option is
not available to Debian ("... unless that component itself accompanies
the executable").
GPL section 3(a) also uses "accompany" in a way that Debian and others
interpret to include distribution in the same directory tree on a
particular server, so -- the usual line of reasoning goes -- it would
be inconsistent to interpret "accompany" one way at the start of
section 3 and a different way at the end of section 3.
Michael Poole
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