[gnutls-dev]GNU TLS OpenSSL compatibility layer under GPL, not LGPL

[Nikos Mavroyanopoulos]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 11:15:02PM -0500, Jeff Licquia wrote:

> I have written a patch for CUPS to use the OpenSSL compatibility code in
> GNU TLS, but upstream noticed something I didn't: the compatibility
> library is in libgnutls-extra, which is still under the GPL.  This
> seemed odd to me; all of the reasons expressed for relicensing under the
> LGPL seem to apply most notably to the OpenSSL layer, as this is what
> enables developers to easily transition to GNU TLS.
>  - Is this intentional?  I can see the argument that a compatibility API
> is "extra" in the technical sense, so it might seem to belong there.

Yes, the OpenSSL compatibility layer was written by Andrew McDonald
to allow GPL programs, that depended on openssl, to compile out of the box 
with gnutls. This was the major problem back then.

>  - Would the authors consider changing the license on the OpenSSL layer
> to the LGPL?  I am not concerned so much with the rest of gnutls-extra,
> or how the code ends up being organized.

This is up to Andrew to decide, but I don't think that this is
really needed. Programs that can use the compatibility layer (which
is quite limited), can be easily modified to use the native gnutls API,
and this is the recommended way. Isn't the upstream author interested
into using gnutls?


> If this discussion has been hashed out elsewhere, I apologize for
> bringing it up again; please post a link.  I could not find any such
> discussion in your list archives.

There was no such discussion in this list, so this was the right place
to send it.


-- 
Nikos Mavroyanopoulos