[gnutls-help] relicensing the core library to "LGPLv3+ or GPLv2+ dual" ?

Andreas Metzler ametzler at bebt.de
Sun Mar 7 18:02:19 CET 2021


On 2021-02-22 Daiki Ueno <ueno at gnu.org> wrote:
> For now the LICENSE file says:

>   Since GnuTLS version 3.1.10, the core library is released under
>   the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 or later
>   (see doc/COPYING.LESSER for the license terms).

> but later on:

>   Note, however, that the nettle and the gmp libraries which are
>   GnuTLS dependencies, they are distributed under a LGPLv3+ or GPLv2+ dual
>   license. As such binaries linking to them need to adhere to either LGPLv3+
>   or the GPLv2+ license.

> I'm wondering if it would cause any problem to explicitly license the
> core library as a LGPLv3+ or GPLv2+ dual license.  Does anyone know of
> any use-case where LGPLv2 is required?
[...]


Hello,

I have forwarded this to debian-legal, trying to get some feedback,
Walter Landry replied with:
| I think this is OK for Debian.  The only tricky clause is Section 4 of
| LGPL 3.  GMP would already make this apply to all of the programs that
| use GnuTLS.  I think the difference, if any, would be what exactly is
| required if someone wanted to modify GnuTLS.  That is not an issue for
| Debian, since Debian releases source code for everything.
| [disclaimer]

Personally I would prefer if yu did not change the license, for the
simple reason that (LGPLv3+ or GPLv2+ dual license) is a lot more
complicated than LGPLv2.1+#

cu Andreas




More information about the Gnutls-help mailing list