Changing from gnutls26 to gnutls28 in quantal?

Scott Ritchie scott at open-vote.org
Wed Aug 1 21:29:40 UTC 2012


On 7/31/12 10:48 PM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 10:15:40PM -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
>> I'm still confused here, since unless I'm mistaken I can link
>> proprietary programs with LGPL-3+ software, but evidently not GPL 2
>> programs?
>
>> That implies there's something in the GPL-2 itself that prohibits
>> such a thing, but I can't seem to find detail in the FAQ there.
>
> The GPLv2 requires that the source for the work and "all modules that it
> contains" be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2 itself.  A work that's
> distributed under LGPLv2 (or LGPLv2+) may explicitly be distributed under
> these terms.  A work that's distributed under LGPLv3 explicitly may *not* be
> distributed under those terms.  Therefore a GPLv2 binary linked with an
> LGPLv3 library fails to meet the terms of the GPLv2 - the same as a GPLv2
> binary linked with OpenSSL does.
>

Ahh ok, so this is something that can in principle be overcome with a 
GPLv2 exception for the library in question, similar to how GPL software 
can link with proprietary libraries.

That may or may not be reasonable to ask those upstreams for those 
particular packages however (do they currently have the openSSL exception?).

-Scott Ritchie



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