[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#669702: OpenSSL and Openconnect VPN in plasma networkmanagement

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2012-05-28 at 12:21 +0200, Ralf Jung wrote:
> According to the copyright headers and the git log, you are the main and 
> actually almost the only author of that plugin. Is that correct, and if yes, 
> would you be willing to add a license extension as stated in [1] to the files, 
> so they can be linked with OpenSSL? 

Like libopenconnect itself, Ilia's code is already licensed under the
LGPL, not the GPL. There is no need for an exception for OpenSSL, in the
openconnect-specific plugin.

Whether that's sufficient or not is not entirely clear to me though. It
is still being loaded into the GPL'd kded as a plugin, after all.

> [1] http://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html

That highlights §2 and §6 of the OpenSSL licence:
 
   * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
   *    software must display the following acknowledgment:
   *    "This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
   *    for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. (http://www.openssl.org/)"

   * 6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following
   *    acknowledgment:
   *    "This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
   *    for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/)"

I don't see the relevance of §6. You're linking to a copy of OpenSSL in
shared library form which already exists on the system; you aren't
redistributing it in any form. So that should be a non-issue, surely?

So that leaves §2, and I have difficulty understanding precisely what
restriction that places on kded. We don't *have* any advertising
materials that mention features or use of OpenSSL, but I suppose the
concern is that any downstream user must have the right to *create*
such, without the wording that OpenSSL requires? But surely they *can*
anyway? Doing so doesn't restrict their ability to use libopenconnect or
anything higher up in the stack; only their ability to distribute
OpenSSL itself, which as already observed we aren't doing.

That said, I'm working on porting to GnuTLS anyway.

-- 
dwmw2
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