Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] Ethereal and H.323 dissector possible license solution
On Thu, Sep 14, 2000 at 12:00:32PM +0200, andreas.sikkema@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> As you all (should?) know, I have released an H.323 dissector
> for Ethereal. The dissector makes heavy use of MPL licensed code
> and Ethereal is off course GPL. From what I know of GPL I cannot
> link my H.323 dissector with Ethereal.
The page at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
lists the MPL amongs the licenses that are not compatible with the GPL.
> I have to create a plugin
> and then it's possible to use the H.323 dissector legally.
>
> In a "Letter to the editor" in the current Linux Weekly News
> ( http://lwn.net/2000/0914/backpage.php3 (last letter) )
> I read the following:
>
> "And if you want to link with a GPLed program, get one side to
> grant an exclusion for the other side. Instant legality
> without the "viral" nature."
>
> So, my question is, can I get such an exclusion for my H.323
> dissector, which is Open Source?
I don't know whether this would just require Gerald to grant the
exclusion, or whether it also requires that the exclusion be granted by
anybody else who's put their own name in a copyright notice in Ethereal
code; I don't think I've actually put my name in a copyright notice, I
think I just did things such as
/* packet-http.c
* Routines for HTTP packet disassembly
*
* Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
*
* $Id: packet-http.c,v 1.22 2000/09/11 16:16:02 gram Exp $
*
* Ethereal - Network traffic analyzer
* By Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxx>
* Copyright 1998 Gerald Combs
but, if not, I'm certainly willing to grant the exception.
(Fortunately, code from 4.4-Lite is now covered by the modified BSD
license - the removal of the advertising clause renders it compatible
with the GPL, as per the page I cited, so dropping the BSD checksumming
code into Ethereal, to use when checksumming the payload of an IP
datagram (i.e., to use when checking the validity of ICMP/UDP/TCP
checksums) is OK.)
