Anthony,
Thanks very much for this very helpful message.
I'm curious of there is any difference for software released under the LGPL instead of the GPL. Can it legally link to openSSL?
LGPL Sec. 6 seems to allow this:
6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications.
Also, (6) requires you do one of 5 things; in short (read the license for details):
(a) Accompany with source so the user may re-link
(b) Use shared lib
(c) 3yr offer of (a)
(d) Explicitly allows distribution offered from same place
(e) if you've already done above, you don't have to do it again.
Fink, by distrubuting full source to both OpenSSL and the LGPL'd library, seems to easily comply with (a) via (d).
However, do note that the LGPL is not really appropriate for anything but a library; see clause 2(a) for example:
(2) You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion
of it,.... provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The modified work must itself be a software library.(Note that the LGLP gives different definitions for Library vs. library.)
[FYI: I haven't spent much time considering the LGPL; it doesn't seem to come up as much.]
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