Clarification about GNUPG and GPGME

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 03:31:27 -0800 (PST), Srinivasa Pradeep said:

> Should we give the source code for our application
> (or provide a link for that), and should we release
> our application as part of GPL?

Yes, these are the conditions of the GPL.  Fortunately we just chaged
the license of gpgme to the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL),
so that you may link it with your proprietary application without
being required to release your application under a GPL compatible one.
What you stuill have to do is to provide the source code of gpgme (a
link to ftp.gnupg.org won't suffice) and give the suer a way to change
gpgme and use this changed version with your application.  The latter
is most easily done by using gpgme as a shared library.

By changing the GPGME license to the LGPL we give proprietary vendors
a commercial advantage.  We did this change due to general concern on
security and privacy; however,we would appreciate one or the other
form of compensation by vendors of proprietary applications using
gpgme.

Thanks,

  Werner