Re: octave license is incompatible with openssl

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 14:43:57 +0800, Alex Vong wrote:
> I thought it was an optional dependency because when I run
> `./configure --help', it contains the following help:
> 
>   --with-openssl          use libcrypto hash routines. Valid ARGs are: 'yes',
>                           'no', 'auto' => use if available, 'optional' => use
>                           if available and warn if not available; default is
>                           'no'
> 
> 
> Perhaps someone unaware of the issue adds this? Should I open a bug
> report on this?

Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of this until now. This
configure option actually comes directly from the gnulib project. You'll
notice that the default is "no", which is exactly as it should be.

Octave provides some standard hash functions that are built on GPL
compatible functions provided by gnulib. As a side effect of enabling
these gnulib modules, gnulib automatically adds the `--with-openssl`
option to allow the user to specify that the OpenSSL libcrypto functions
should be used instead.

I couldn't find this described or documented anywhere, just had to go
digging through the configuration macros, e.g.

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/m4/gl-openssl.m4
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/m4/sha1.m4

Cheers,

-- 
mike