[pkg-netfilter-team] Bug#979103: Legally problematic GPL-3+ readline dependency

[Arturo Borrero Gonzalez]

On 1/2/21 6:49 PM, Bastian Germann wrote:
> Package: nftables
> Severity: important
> 
> This package depends on libreadline8 which is GPL-3+ licensed. According to 
> debian/copyright parts of your package are GPL-2-only licensed. If that is also 
> (transitively) the case for the binaries that link with libreadline.so.8 it 
> might be legally problematic (see 
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility).
> 
> There is an easy solution to the problem: Replacing the build dependency 
> libreadline-dev with libreadline-gplv2-dev links with the GPL-2+ licensed older 
> version. However, that is orphaned in Debian, so libeditreadline-dev should be 
> preferred, which does not compile with your package without any patch. It links 
> with the BSD-licensed libedit library which is a readline replacement.
> 

Thanks for the heads up.

I started a conversation upstream, let's see what happens there first.