[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#669702: OpenSSL and Openconnect VPN in plasma networkmanagement

[Ralf Jung]

Hi,

> > According to the copyright headers and the git log, you are the main and
> > actually almost the only author of that plugin. Is that correct, and if
> > yes, would you be willing to add a license extension as stated in [1] to
> > the files, so they can be linked with OpenSSL?
> 
> Like libopenconnect itself, Ilia's code is already licensed under the
> LGPL, not the GPL. There is no need for an exception for OpenSSL, in the
> openconnect-specific plugin.
Oh, I did not know that. Sorry for the noise, Ilia.
But then I actually do not see the issue here - does the GPL even infect 
through libraries which are only found and dlsym'ed at runtime? I mean, most 
of kdelibs is also LGPL. So the entire of kded and would have to be re-
licensed for any kded plugin to be able to use OpenSSL? Wow...

> Whether that's sufficient or not is not entirely clear to me though. It
> is still being loaded into the GPL'd kded as a plugin, after all.
> 
> > [1] http://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html
> 
> That highlights §2 and §6 of the OpenSSL licence:
> 
>    * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
>    *    software must display the following acknowledgment:
>    *    "This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
>    *    for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. (http://www.openssl.org/)"
> 
>    * 6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following
>    *    acknowledgment:
>    *    "This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
>    *    for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/)"
> 
> I don't see the relevance of §6. You're linking to a copy of OpenSSL in
> shared library form which already exists on the system; you aren't
> redistributing it in any form. So that should be a non-issue, surely?
From what I understood - but that's not very much - the problem is simply that 
this is a restriction, while the GPL forbids all kinds of restrictions.


> That said, I'm working on porting to GnuTLS anyway.
That's good news. Let me know if I can help testing :)

Kind regards,
Ralf