gpgme license

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 12:57:22 -0400, Niels Provos said:

> I suggest that you suspend your freedom ideology for a moment.  It is

Sorry Niels, but the GNU project is about freedom and ensuring that
the freedom of the software can't be taken way.  

We have seen quite a lot of software turned into proprietory one and
the BSD license does not protect against this.  I have often talked
with BSD folks (e.g. Ben Laurie) about this and my conclusion is that
we have different believes on how to make software free; the GNU
project and most folks using the GPL feel that some protection is
required whereas others have a more altruistic approach.  

Now that Microsoft is especially firing against the GPL one might get
a hint that it was not too bad to use the "restrictive" GPL.

> is GPL, that would make his code automatically GPL, too.  As a result,
> he was asking if it is possible to make gpgme licensed under the LGPL
> which was created specifically for this purpose.

I have decided to publish GPGME under the GPL and I see no reason to
change it.  Frankly, I can't do that anymore because some small parts
are taken from FSF copyrighed GPL code.

You may have noticed that we (the GNU project) recently switched the
license of libgcrypt and GNUTLS from GPL to LGPL with the rationale
that there already a couple of other libraries doing the same and we
would not gain anything from keeping it under the GPL.  GPGME is a
different thing.

> PGP is a failing technology anyway.  There are incompatibilities
> everywhere and we are probably better off using a well designed

Come on, compared to all the incompatibilities of S/MIME the claimed
OpenPGP incompatibilities are tiny.  Or are you talking about IDEA,
that is something we can't do anything about.  BTW, more and more
companies are using OpenPGP ebcuase this is the only email encryption
system which actually works.

> standard like S/MIME for example.  Releasing gpgme under a restrictive
> license is of course not going to help the adaption of that

GPGME is not bound to OpenPGP but a protocol neutral by design.  We
already have a pretty well working backend for S/MIME (well, CMS).

> technology.  So, I feel justified in stating that your license stance
> is hurting pgp even further.

The future will tell.  

BTW, Ximian does not want to use GPGME for Evolution because it seems
that this would hinder the development of their proprietory
extensions.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner