It's the GPL license that's broken, not OpenSSL. I believe the main reason that you cannot link with OpenSSL's license is because of the BSD with credit/advertising clause. The BSD license gives you much more freedom though, especially with commercial applications which would not be possible with GPL (some commercial applications, cannot be open-source because of signed NDAs and other secretive information that the company writing the commercial app has no control over). If you absolutely require a GPL licensed crypto library, use GNUTLS and friends.
-Brad Matt England wrote: > OpenSSL developers, > > Summary: > > Is the OpenSSL project considering any future release of it's software > under a GPL-based license? If not for the general public, then possibly > for my specific project (Cleversafe Dispersed Storage: > http://www.cleversafe.org/ )? > > I realize this may be a tired subject in this community. Forgive me if > my email query is in appropriate. > > > Details: > > I represent a GPL-based project (Cleversafe Dispersed Storage) that > currently leverages OpenSSL: > > http://www.cleversafe.org/ > > We would like to be able to integrate OpenSSL into our project in a > GPL-friendly fashion (so that, among other things, we can distribute > OpenSSL source code in our source tarballs so that our users/developers > can build all of our dependent modules from source). As I'm sure you > are well aware, the current OpenSSL license is not "GPL friendly" in > some sense, even though there appears to be no problems with us linking > to the OpenSSL dynamic library, which we currently do. > > We are familiar with how other projects have approached this issue per > this reference and others: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_exception > > We would prefer to present a "pure" GPL license to our stakeholders > without any modifications (as per the "OpenSSL exception" mICQ and wget > apparently use). > > We realize that it may be unlikely that OpenSSL can or will do this. In > any case, I'm leaving no stone unturned to evaluate my project's options > for OpenSSL before we begin pursuit of other options like Mozilla's NSS > or GnuTLS. > > Thank you for your time and consideration. > > -Matt > > ______________________________________________________________________ > OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org > Development Mailing List openssl-dev@openssl.org > Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List openssl-dev@openssl.org Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
