[I am not speaking for the KDE team as a whole, but for myself as author of
the C++ SSL wrapper and utility classes for KDE 2.0]
On Monday 13 November 2000 20:22, Michael T. Babcock wrote:
> Ulf Moeller wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 13, 2000, George Staikos wrote:
> > > (I have emails here if you need to see these) Anyhow, is there
> > > any chance of OpenSSL being released under GPL, or failing that, under
> > > a BSD style licence without the advertising clause?
> >
> > The original authors now work for a company that sells a toolkit with the
> > same functionality for a six figure price.
> >
> > Is there any chance of the GPL being changed to something less obnoxious?
> > :)
>
> I'd watch yourself -- you'll lose a lot of respect if you start slandering
> (as opposed to criticising) licenses like the GPL. Note: the poster
> mentioned the BSD license, which would allow the use you infer.
I see you cc:'d to me, but not to Ulf. Those were his words, not mine. No
problem though. Calling it obnoxious is not slandering. It's an opinion and
definitely a criticism. However, this is not the issue here so we can put
that to rest.
> The GPL also does not prevent the above use -- simply use the LGPL for the
> base code and wrap it with the extras in a closed-source method to bundle
> for sale.
>
> It is better to keep silent and thought a fool ...
IANAL. I don't care for any of this. Infact, I'm royally pissed off that I
didn't get to spend my free hour tonight coding because I had to deal with
this. I only brought this to the attention of this list because there is not
much we can do short of using a different library or rolling our own. Many
other people must be in this situation too, probably unknowingly. We have to
resolve this, and if what we are doing is not allowed, it should probably be
documented in the OpenSSL documentation.
This is what has been said by the FSF (who harassed us for not using the GPL
in the first place):
[While you are reading this, keep in mind that this is KDE. We have to allow
redistribution in binary forms, on cds sold by vendors, and more. Some
platforms will be compiling and linking with a closed source commercial
compiler, linker and library too (ie HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris). This is not
negotiable.]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 15:07:59 -0500
From: Free Software Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: J. Steele <xxx@yyy>
Subject: Re: GPL applications linking with non-GPL libraries (e.g. OpenSSL)
[ I apologize for the late response to this message. Email to this address
was backlogged, and we are struggling to catch-up. ]
J. Steele wrote:
> Free Software Foundataion Representative:
>
> I want to use the GPL for an application I am working on, but I need your
help
> in understanding the implications of the license.
>
> I hope to use some of the cryptographic functions provided in OpenSSL
> (www.openssl.org). My understanding from their documentation is that
OpenSSL has
> an "Apache style license" (which looks like an old style BSD license with
the
> advertising clause).
The OpenSSL license is a free software license that is incompatible with the
GPL.
> May I dynamically link my GPL-ed application to OpenSSL?
You cannot do this without a special exception, lest redistribution of your
software will not be legal.
> If not, how are GPL developers expected to do crypto?
This is a real problem, That's why we have it on our task list (see
http://www.gnu.org/prep/tasks.html#SEC9).
> I know GnuPG writes it own code, but I do not want to copy the GnuPG
> crypto code into my development tree and then run the risk of implementing
> it incorrectly. Using crypto code correctly is critical to security, and I
> would prefer to have well defined libaries to which I can simply feed
> streams of data for encryption.
I believe we have some people who are working on a general cryptography
library that is under a GPL compatible license. Would you like me to try to
get you in touch with them?
--
Bradley M. Kuhn
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
--
George Staikos
______________________________________________________________________
OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org
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