[gnutls-dev] (L)GPL v3 (was: GnuTLS 1.7.14)

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2007-06-26 Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> wrote:
[...]
> * Update license to (L)GPLv3.
[...]

Hello,

I have eyed the gnutls-extra dependency chain's copyright statements.
Most of them seem to use the "either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version." language.

However (mini)lzo 2.02 is version 2 only:

  The LZO library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
  version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

2.01 (which is the minilzo version in gnutls's tarball) used the
or-later-clause and can therefore be linked into a
GPLv3-or-later-licensed gnutls-extra. However upgrading to minilzo
2.02 or linking against the separate lzo2 library as distributed by
Linux distributions would be impossible currently. Afaik GPLv2-only
code and GPLv3-or-later code may not be linked together.

I am yet not sure what the implications of going from LGPLv2 to LGPLv3
for libgnutls itself are; I only found a compatibility-matrix for v3
draft on the FSF site on http://gplv3.fsf.org/dd3-faq

I do not know if this matrix still is correct for the final LGPLv3 but
it says that GPLv2-only applies cannot use LGPLv3 libs. I am not sure
on how big a problem this is going to cause, on a quick check on my
installed gnutls using packages only cups, lynx and KDE do without the
or-later-clause.

cu andreas
-- 
`What a good friend you are to him, Dr. Maturin. His other friends are
so grateful to you.'
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