[gnutls-devel] Licensing problem LGPLv3+ vs. GPLv2only conflict

Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos nmav at gnutls.org
Fri Jul 19 17:37:49 CEST 2013


On 07/19/2013 03:58 PM, Tomas Mraz wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> as was noticed by Debian and GNOME developers and reported here
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=986347 the GnuTLS 3.x is
> effectively LGPLv3+ because it links to gmp which is LGPLv3+ although
> the GnuTLS itself is LGPLv2+. The biggest problem it causes is that
> multiple software applications that are GPLv2 and use gnutls which
> creates the licensing conflict. Is there any way out of this mess?

A solution is to use gmp 4.2.1 which is LGPLv2+.

Another is to have gmp allow linking with GPLv2 programs. My impression
on last conversation with the gmp developers is that they do not
consider that a serious problem to dual license gmp GPLv2/LGPLv3. I
think bring the issue up to them and mentioning the projects that it
affects, would help solve the issue.

regards,
Nikos




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