Re: Another update of GNU TLS bindings

[Simon Josefsson]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     Are these real concerns?  As far as I understand, the laws regarding
>     crypto export and free software has been lifted.  Other free software
>     projects seem to use crypto as well (e.g., GNU Wget that links with
>     OpenSSL which isn't GPL, but usually considered a "system library").
>
> The GPL does not actually say "system library"; that is a way of
> referring to a more precise criterion which OpenSSL clearly does not
> fit.
>
> I will have to write to the wget developer about this.  Thanks for
> reporting the problem.  Do you know of any others?

Not on top of my head, but could you please explain why you think this
is a problem?

Several network related GNU projects will be inadequate, to the point
of being useless and even dangerous to use, if they don't support
crypto; projects that come to mind, other than emacs, are adns,
httptunnel, mailman, and zebra.  Not to mention GNUPG and GNU TLS
which solely deal with security.  I guess the network code in Hurd
need to support IPSEC etc to be useful as well.

Naturally, it would be good if GNU projects used GNU libraries for
secure communication, but since there hasn't been any until recently
and that OpenSSL still is alot more mature and tested it doesn't seem
unreasonable to use it until someone offers help to port applications
to GNU TLS.  Compare the situation with how Emacs links with non-GPL
libraries, for widgets and graphics right now.