Re: octave license is incompatible with openssl

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 00:00:59 +0800, Alex Vong wrote:
> Hi octave devs,
> 
> During a look of the octave package in guix (a functional package
> manager, part of gnu), we notice octave have an optional dependency on
> openssl.
> 
> However, since the license of octave (gpl3+) is incompatible
> with that of openssl
> (https://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html), the
> resulting binary after linking is not re-distributable.

Agreed.

> So, we drop the optional dependency to avoid the problem.

Precisely what is the optional dependency that is dropped?

Octave does not directly link with OpenSSL nor use any OpenSSL
functions. The Octave package on Debian builds with all optional
dependencies enabled, and the resulting binary is linked with GnuTLS.

> Is there any plan to fix this problem? There are some solutions we think
> of: 1. add openssl linking exception to the license 2. provide support
> for linking with gnutls as an alternative. In any case, I think we
> should warn the user about it.
> 
> What are your ideas? (the messages below include the whole discussion on
> the guix-devel mailing list)

The Octave Guix package may be indirectly linking with OpenSSL through a
direct dependency such as libcurl. I would recommend that you use a
libcurl that is built against GnuTLS as we do on Debian.

AFAICS, nothing needs to be fixed in Octave.

HTH,

-- 
mike