On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 01:34:43PM -0500, Alan DeKok wrote:
Paul TBBle Hampson <Paul.Hampson@Pobox.com> wrote:
That's slightly different. The GPL's exception is for things that are normally part of the OS (ie libc) unless the GPL'd thing is also part of the OS.
i.e. Since RedHat ships with OpenSSL, linking FreeRADIUS to OpenSSL is fine.
Since Red Hat ships with OpenSSL, linking FreeRADIUS to OpenSSL and shipping it *outside of Red Hat* is fine. By the most conservative interpretation of the GPL, shipping it *in* Red Hat would not be.
Anyway, the short summary is you can't upload to Debian anything that has both GPL'd code and links to OpenSSL.
Debian has always had a slightly odd interpretation of the GPL.
Without case law to settle the license's ambiguities, or a legal budget for when a copyright holder decides they have a different interpretation of the license than we do, Debian is always going to err on the side of caution. FWIW, the GPLv3 draft includes language that appears aimed both at resolving the license incompatibility with advertising clauses, and resolving the OS exception ambiguity in favor of people who want to bundle GPL works with propietary (or at least, incompatibly-licensed) OSes. As a proponent of free operating systems I don't really think the latter is a good idea, but there it is. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/