On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
Ok, IANAL and I won't stress this as there's probably something here that my
little brain hasn't understood.
> > - Just make your extension a library and name it OpenSSL.
> > - Or just extend the existing OpenSSL library to do whatever things you
> > want.
>
> I don't think either of these works. The exception clearly says:
>
> In addition, as a special exception, the Free Software Foundation
> gives permission to link the code of its release of Wget with the
> OpenSSL project's "OpenSSL" library
>
> So if you name a random library "OpenSSL", it's no longer "OpenSSL
> project's 'OpenSSL' library".
You're right about my first paragraph. But then there's nothing that says
what it contains. Using the second approach is only a minor variation of the
first.
> (or with modified versions of it that use the same license as the
> "OpenSSL" library),
>
> I don't know what the OpenSSL license is, but it might well bind you to
> distribute the source to that as well.
It doesn't. OpenSSL uses a BSD-like license (and that is the main reason why
it isn't "compatible" with GPL, AFAIK). It only forces you to display the
OpenSSL copyright text should you decide to distribute binaries using source
code based on it.
I am allowed to get OpenSSL, modify it and distribute binaries without
releasing the code to my changes.
> Other GNU programs have used similar exceptions in the past. I find it
> unlikely that they would have contained such an obvious flaw. But then
> again, some flaws become obvious only *after* someone first spots them.
To tell you the truth, I've thought about this before in other projects as
well, I just finally stepped forward and ventilated my thoughts about it.
Not that I think it'll happen to wget, but it would certainly be interesting
if someone would contribute source code to the project that is strict GPL
(without the exception) as then the new clean GPL-code would "impose further
restrictions" than the existing code and wouldn't be compatible and thus
couldn't be used...
Anyway, I'll drop this now and go play in my own backyard again. ;-)
--
Daniel Stenberg - http://daniel.haxx.se - +46-705-44 31 77
ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol
