Ethereal-dev: RE: [Ethereal-dev] Possible license problem with Ethereal and Ope nSSL
The macro got called "AC_ETHEREAL_SSL_CHECK" by dint of:
1. being cloned from another macro, and
2. libcrypto.{a,so} being part of SSL (Open or otherwise).
libcrypto is required to build Ethereal using UCD-SNMP or net-snmp if that
product was built using the SSL encryption library.
Either one of those SNMP suites (they really are the same product, net-snmp
being the later version) is used to translate OID string to names.
Therefore to remove the dependency on libcrypto:
1. configure Ethereal without SNMP decoding, or
2. rebuild the SNMP library without using the SSL encryption library
and with the built in MD5 code, then rebuild Ethereal.
Regards,
Andrew Hood
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't
even know existed can render your own computer unusable. -- Leslie Lamport,
as quoted in CACM, June 1992
-----Original Message-----
From: Guy Harris [mailto:gharris@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, 20 August 2001 14:41
To: ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Possible license problem with Ethereal
and OpenSSL
On Sun, Aug 19, 2001 at 11:21:28PM -0500, ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
> I don't know the specifics but the following is included in the
> license for fetchmail 5.8.17 (5.9.0 most recent version):
>
> Specific permission is granted for this code to be linked to OpenSSL
> (this is necessary becuse the OpenSSL license is not GPL-compatible).
>
> Because ethereal is GPL, I presume it is not legal to redistribute
> binaries linked against OpenSSL. Any problems adding the above clause
> to the ethereal license to make it legal?
Do we, in fact, link against any SSL library, as in a library that
implements SSL?
"AC_ETHEREAL_SSL_CHECK" is a somewhat misnamed macro; in fact, the
library it deals with is a crypto library, and we link against that
because some versions of UCD SNMP/NETSNMP apparently require it, not
because we use it for anything related to SSL.
Is any version of that crypto library licensed under a
non-GPL-compatible license?
> According to packet-ssl.c, the copyright owner is:
> /* packet-ssl.c
> * Routines for ssl dissection
> * Copyright (c) 2000-2001, Scott Renfro <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> so he would need to give his permission for the license change. I don't
> know if it is sufficient for only packet-ssl.c to have the license
> change mentioned above.
As per the above, we don't, as far as I know, use any SSL library, so
the fact that "packet-ssl.c" happens to be an SSL dissector doesn't, as
far as I know, matter - Scott's permission is no more or less relevant
than anybody else's permission. If anybody needs to give permission for
a license change, *everybody* who's contributed code to Ethereal needs
to do so, as far as I know.
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