[openssl-dev] We're working on license changes

[Blumenthal, Uri - 0553 - MITLL]

+1

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  Original Message  
From: Hanno Böck
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2015 12:55
To: openssl-dev at openssl.org
Reply To: openssl-dev at openssl.org
Subject: Re: [openssl-dev] We're working on license changes

Hi,

On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 14:37:30 +0000
"Salz, Rich" <rsalz at akamai.com> wrote:

> Please see https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2015/08/01/cla/ for some
> more details.
> 
> Summary: Moving to Apache 2, CLA's coming, it will take time.

This is a huge step if it works (I leave it up to the lawyers to decide
if it will), but I want to question whether Apache License is really a
wise move.

AFAIK there has been work done to make the apache license compatible
with the GPL, both with changes in the APache license and the GPL, but
this only applies to the GPL 3.
Whether one likes that or not, there is still a lot of GPL2-only code
out there and that's unlikely to change because for some projects it's
close to impossible to change the license due to the number of
contributors.
Just to give a very concrete example: Apache 2 licensing would mean
that the linux kernel could not take code from OpenSSL.

In the spirit of making OpenSSL as useful as possible for everyone I
would consider a permissive license that's more compatible (e.g. MIT) a
wiser choice.

-- 
Hanno Böck
http://hboeck.de/

mail/jabber: hanno at hboeck.de
GPG: BBB51E42

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