OpenPGP Card

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 10:14:41PM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> Zeljko Vrba wrote:  

>> Neither do I understand that. Werner didn't give a single plausible
>> argument except possibly of license incompatibility. But in my
>> understanding, just incorporating PKCS#11 support into GnuPG would
>> NOT cause license incompatibility. It would happen at run-time if
>> the user chooses to load GPL-incompatible binary PKCS#11 driver
>> (which most of them are).

> Right... This argument was given to me also...
> But I could not find any justification for it...

> Let's say you use GPLed licensed program on windows... It loads
> kernel32.dll, right?

kernel32.dll falls under the following language in the GPL:

 However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not
 include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
 binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on)
 of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that
 component itself accompanies the executable.

> Since your GPLed program does not contain any other licensed code it is
> still GPLed...
> The same goes with GPLed licensed program that loads PKCS#11
> module...

Not unless that PKCS#11 module "is normally distributed with the major
components of the operating system". (Assuming here that the PKCS#11
module would is a library that GnuPG would be dlopen.)

-- 
Lionel