Qtopia Phone Licensing Issue

Graeme Gregory graeme at openmoko.org
Tue Apr 1 16:35:30 CEST 2008


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




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