[arch-general] readline GPL violation on two pkgs?

Aaron Griffin aaronmgriffin at gmail.com
Wed Jun 24 21:16:51 EDT 2009


On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Gerardo Exequiel
Pozzi<vmlinuz386 at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
> Jan de Groot wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 11:10 -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>
>>>> See the source code, is "old" BSD, or maybe the author forgot to
>>>>
>>> update
>>>
>>>> the license ? for example tftp/main.c uses 4-clause and uses
>>>>
>>> readline.
>>>
>>> You think we should just remove the package? We have alternate tftp
>>> implementations, right?
>>>
> No, just do not link to readline. This action will depend on how much
> importance is given to the licenses in Arch.
>
> This is why the question mark in the title ;) Personally I don't care if
> link or not link for these issues in licenses.
>>
>> I don't want to be an ass here, but shouldn't we remove openssl too?
>>
> ugh!, this is ugly.
>
> And if we get in tight, there are conflicts between different versions
> of the GPL, this is ugly. To this are the lawyers, who enjoy these
> things, and not for us who are programmers, right?
>
> Good Luck.

To paraphrase what Thomas said to me: This is all free software, we
should be able to use free software with other free software, damnit.
It seems to go against the spirit to do things like this. I like this
sentiment. I mean, I get that there are zealots out there who strongly
believe in their Chosen License as if it were a soccer team, but
seriously - it's all free software, and we may be subtly violating the
letter of the license, but the letter of the license is violating the
_spirit_ of the license.


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