Qtopia Phone Licensing Issue

[Wolfgang Spraul]

Graeme -

> Personally I would rate libamr as the more urgent issue as its a true
> unknown, openssl is just a mess that has been around for your and no- 
> one
> has gone suing over it.
Fully agree with you. From the two libamr looks interesting. Remember  
we have to focus our time on REAL PROGRESS, that is also true for  
licensing work.
I love to spend time on this issue, but let's spend it in areas where  
we are really making progress.
Let's see what we can find out about libamr...

> src/3rdparty is where Trolltech for insane reasons known only to
> themselves had imported libraries from community they use. They link
> against these versions rather than the ones from any other source and
> there doesnt appear to be configure options to stop this.
True but again, which specific library are you talking about? The fact  
that there is no configure option doesn't mean we are forcing  
anything. The whole build system is FOSS as well. In fact we spend a  
lot of time to get it integrated into OE well. I love more choice, so  
if someone adds an easy way to swap out OpenSSL for GnuTLS then great.  
But I don't see how you can argue that if Openmoko does not do this  
themselves, we are forcing anyone to do anything wrt copyright law.

> This whole issue irritates me as GPLv3 specifically allows linking  
> with
> OpenSSL so it obviously was not in FSF intentions to prohibit this in
> GPLv2, just an oversite. But you know how rabid the community gets  
> about
> licensing.
Yes, but I guess you see it yourself now. If even the FSF adds a  
special OpenSSL clause in GPLv3, I don't think there is a need for us  
to be stricter than the FSF!
Unfortunately rabies is pretty much 100% fatal.

Wolfgang

On Apr 1, 2008, at 10:35 PM, Graeme Gregory wrote:

> Wolfgang Spraul wrote:
>> Graeme -
>> we need to look into this a bit more serious :-)
>> Rather than pointing fingers at those two libraries, I suggest we
>> think about how to improve the situation.
>> openssl is one of the most respected Free Software projects, I know
>> Ralf Engelschall personally from many years back in Munich...
>> The licensing issues around openssl are legend, I don't need to get
>> into the details here.
>>
>> Please explain exactly why you think we are "forcing the stuff in
>> src/3rdparty to link against openssl"?
>> What is in src/3rdparty? Why are we forcing anyone to link against
>> openssl?
>> Are you saying we cannot ship a rootfs that only has an openssl  
>> binary
>> because someone who doesn't like the openssl license would have to
>> compile GnuTLS by themselves? That would take the licensing debates  
>> to
>> the next level! I'm sure that's not what you mean, so please give me
>> some more background information.
>>
> src/3rdparty is where Trolltech for insane reasons known only to
> themselves had imported libraries from community they use. They link
> against these versions rather than the ones from any other source and
> there doesnt appear to be configure options to stop this.
>
> I believe if qtopia links against openssl and these libraries then  
> it is
> possibly in violation of the license of these libraries. Some may not
> wish to be linked with openssl.
>
> This whole issue irritates me as GPLv3 specifically allows linking  
> with
> OpenSSL so it obviously was not in FSF intentions to prohibit this in
> GPLv2, just an oversite. But you know how rabid the community gets  
> about
> licensing.
>
> Its not a problem for us to have openssl on rootfs, look at debian.
>
>>> Yes this is one solution, I wonder if Holger can estimate the time  
>>> it
>>> would require.
>> What is your estimate on how long it would take you?
>>
>> What do we currently need libamr for? Can we just disable use of the
>> library right now? Where and how is the speech codec used?
> According to Holger it is used for the memo recorder. I guess it can
> probably be hacked out of the source until some licensing guru
> investigates libamr fully.
>
> Personally I would rate libamr as the more urgent issue as its a true
> unknown, openssl is just a mess that has been around for your and no- 
> one
> has gone suing over it.
>
> Graeme
>