Re: coreutils & openssl

[Pádraig Brady]

On 31/01/17 08:43, Michael Stone wrote:
> I've gotten another ping about distributing the debian coreutils package 
> linked against openssl. Putting arguments about the technical merits 
> aside, I'm confused about the license implications of doing so. 
> coreutils has a --with-openssl option, but does not have a license 
> exception for linking with openssl as gpl-incompatible code. Am I 
> missing something?

We left the enablement of that option off by default,
to let distributors explicitly decide if it was appropriate
to invoke the GPL "special exception" and treat openssl as
a system library shipped with the OS, thus allowing
coreutils to use it.

Fedora allows this for example, while debian does not,
as of 2002 at least¹

thanks,
Pádraig

¹ https://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html