LGPL library using only LGPL-parts of partially GPL shared library (gnutls, nettle)

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Wed Feb 23 21:18:03 CET 2011


On Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:14, nmav at gnutls.org said:

> You don't want the http client to even know it is using that crypto or
> compression library. It shouldn't care.

Fine with me.  To implement that more correctly you need to use another
process.  Simply using code from a library does not solve this problem.
An ELF DSO is not different than linking the code statically.  On
Windows a DLL is a little bit different (because it is a kernel object)
but in the end is does not matter either; your code may change the
behaviour of the library and in the worst case the library stops
working.  With separate processes the story is a bit different: The
kernel knows about the processes and tries very hard to isolate them.
All what we do with libs is just a naive try to mimic what a kernel is
able to do.  You better don't think of application and library as
separate objects but of writing one of these old PCDOS programs (which
may include TSRs and driver) with no kernel guaranteed protection
boundaries.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.





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