Thunder could bundle GnuPG (Re: LibrePGP in Thunderbird, maybe treat it as optional)

[Bernhard Reiter]

Am Dienstag 13 Februar 2024 11:36:35 schrieb Werner Koch:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2024 10:44, Kai Engert said:
> > GnuPG cannot be used as Thunderbird's default crypto backend. Because
> > the licenses are incompatible, Thunderbird must not bundle GnuPG.
>
> Just for the records: That is simply not true.  Thunderbird already uses
> LGPL-2+ code and thus there is no reason not to use GPGME which uses the
> same license.  Of course TB should not bundle GnuPG - no other mail
> client on Unix does this either and adding a suggestion or automatic
> install of Gpg4win, as Enigmail did, is not much of a problem.

I second this.

From the license point of view Thunderbird could bundle GnuPG
without problems. (Whether it should is a different question.)

Here is the reference I know of for the presumed problem:
  https://wiki.gnupg.org/EMailClients/Thunderbird

"It is unknown in public what the main reasons for doing a new implementation 
instead of using GnuPG (and Gpg4win) were. One Mozilla developer wrote about 
licensing concerns [1], but other people have pointed out that GPGME is GNU 
LGPL and the GNU GPL of GnuPG itself allows for a combined distribution of 
Thunderbird and GnuPG."

[1] https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2019-December/007287.html

Do you know of any other concern regarding the license?

Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
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