[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#495269: OpenSSL and GPLed kvirc

[Francesco Poli]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:56:27 +0200 Raúl Sánchez Siles wrote:

>   Hello All:
> 
>   I'm working to close correctly bug #495269.

Good, your effort is really appreciated.

> OpenSSL exception for GPL has 
> been overlooked until now.
[...]
>   As KVIrc main developer states, next stable release 3.4.1, which will be 
> only a bugfix maintenance release, will include the OpenSSL exception in its 
> licence. Even we have written will (possibly even permission) from the KVIrc 
> copyright holder that OpenSSL exception applies on KVIrc, strictly speaking 
> the current released version (3.4.0) does not state that explicitly. (See 
> upstream tarball)

There's something which is not really clear to me.

KVIrc links with OpenSSL.
KVIrc is released under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 and will soon add
an exception to allow linking with OpenSSL.
That seems to fix the licensing conflict.

Wait.
KVIrc also links with other libraries (e.g. libarts) which are released
under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later.
Those libraries have no OpenSSL exception, AFAICS, and hence do not
allow linking with OpenSSL (directly or indirectly).

Hence, the licensing conflict does not seem to be fixed!
I would like to see some input from other debian-legal regulars...


N.B.: all this is clearly based on the FSF linking legal theory, which
has never been tested in court, AFAIK, but should be assumed as valid,
to be on the safe side...

Disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.

[...]
> Note: Please CC me.

Done.


P.S.: I think the severity of this bug should probably be raised to
"serious".

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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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