GPGMail and the GPL?

Robert J. Hansen rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Wed May 18 04:19:37 CEST 2005


http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj/GPGMail.html
http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj/LICENSE.txt

... Stéphane Corthésy's GPGMail is a fine implementation of GnuPG for  
the OS X platform, but my reading of the license suggests it's not  
GPL-compliant.  The other text on the site suggests that he's using  
gpgme to do some of the work, which would seem to lead to a license  
conflict.

Particularly, Stéphane's license requires:

     * His written permission before:
         * Large-scale redistribution of the source code
         * Distributing source code in printed form
         * Distributing modified source
         * Using his source to create commercial products
     * No fees may be charged for source, not even to
       accomodate reasonable copying fees
     * He can change the license at any time and have it
       binding, without you agreeing to the new terms

He's also misattributing GPGME's copyright; he's attributing it to  
2001-2003 the MacGPG Group.  I believe this attribution is in error.

I'm not in any way trying to slight Stéphane's excellent work.  It's  
good stuff.  I'm just hoping that one of the core GnuPG devels,  
someone who holds copyright on a part of GnuPG, can politely ask  
Stéphane what's going on and resolve any conflict, should one  
actually exist.





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