Re: GPL-3 & openssl: provide a -nossl variant for a library
* Henrique de Moraes Holschuh:
> The problem is that Debian is the operating system distributing the system
> libraries, and that all packages Debian distributes are *also* part of that
> same operating system.
>
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/10/msg00113.html
> https://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html
>
> And read this, especially slides 8, 9, and 10:
> www.lawseminars.com/materials/08OPSMA/opsma%20m%20fontana%2010-29%20new%20up.pdf
>
> Where it is clear it is indeed a concern. Note that Fontana is both a
> lawyer, and co-author of the GPLv3.
But Fedora, whose policies Richard Fontana helped to shape over the
years, considers OpenSSL to be a library covered by the system library
exception.
In practice, the FSF seems to agree with this interpretation (for the
GPLv2) because Microsoft Services for UNIX links GPL software such as
GCC against a proprietary libc which is part of the same software
package, and I don't think the FSF has even tried to stop them. (This
libc is BSD-derived and not the Windows kernel or something like that,
it is an intermediate layer.)
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