On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Westley Martínez <aniko...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, 2011-03-09 at 18:20 -0500, James Y Knight wrote: >> It's well known that OpenSSL is incompatible with the GPL. [1] Python (from >> 2.6) is *always* linked against openssl, instead of waiting for you to >> "import ssl". >> >> Doesn't this mean it's now impossible (rather, a license violation) to >> distribute a GPL'd python program (or to use a GPL'd library in your python >> program)? This seems like a problem... >> >> Thanks to Ulrik Sverdrup >> (http://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2011/03/msg00082.html) for pointing >> this out... >> >> James >> >> [1] http://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html > > Is it legal to distribute GPL programs that use the Win32 API?
Of course it is -- otherwise no program running on windows could ever be under the GPL. You probably are thinking of Python programs that would specifically use the win32 extensions -- but implicitly any program, including binary programs, using Windows will have to use some API from the OS in order to communicate with the rest of the system and the world. This "system library" exception could not apply automatically to Python win32 if its terms where too restrictive or if it was a component hard to set up, or with a high commercial cost (neither is the case). But even then, since the licensing of a Software is ultimately upon its authors, they are always OK to add special exceptions to the License file distributed with the program, stating that this or that library is exempted from the GPL terms. What one can't do is to take a work under the GPL, build upon it, and in this process make use of a library or module with a license incompatible with the GPL, and redistribute that work (though, note that even then one is free to use such a work on his own systems). Because then he'd have to add that exception to the original license. js -><- That is clear from the examples on the FAQ. > > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/jsbueno%40python.org.br > _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com