Re: Please recompile packages against libmysqlclient12.

[Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net>]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 05:37:15PM +0200, Joerg Wendland wrote:
> Steve Langasek, on 2003-04-14, 09:38, you wrote:
> > There's also no wiggle room for "indirect linking" arguments, because
> > Debian is distributed as a cohesive whole: if we distribute GPL app foo
> > linked against LGPL library bar, and Debian's copy of libbar is linked
> > against OpenSSL, you cannot argue that it was not our intent to
> > distribute a copy of foo that depends on OpenSSL -- if it was, we should
> > have provided a copy of libbar that was *not* linked against OpenSSL.

> I could imagine something similar, though. One could build a library
> that provides the same API as OpenSSL but does not link against it.
> Instead it would search the system for installed libraries, dlopen()s
> them and uses them as kind of a plugin. Correctly implemented this
> library could provide support for openssl, gnutls and maybe even the old
> ssleay (not really useful though) as 'backend'. Even more so, there
> could be a default 'null' plugin that wouldn't provide any service but
> let called SSL routines simply fail when no usable SSL library is
> installed.

A nice thought experiment, but if you've gotten the software to work
with the LGPL'ed gnutls, there's no practical reason why you would want
to continue supporting OpenSSL, IMHO.

Besides which, our package dependencies constitute a quite explicit
declaration of our intentions; and since libssl is now Priority:
standard (meaning an admin must take action to make it *not* be
available to this package), your theoretical package would have to
depend on gnutls *and* list gnutls first in its search path in order to
avoid the appearance of an intentional license violation.

But I think we shouldn't clutter individuals' mailboxes with this thread
any further; please followup to debian-legal if you want to continue
discussing the legalities.

Regards,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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