What's Fedora's stance on linking GPL-only libraries into the same process as a library which is considered GPL-incompatible (such as 4-clause BSD) if this linking happens rather indirectly? We currently link psql against both libreadline and libcrypto/libssl (OpenSSL), so if that is okay, more indirect linking should be acceptable as well. However, I'm not sure I'd appreciate that if I were a GPL-only library author who chose that license deliberately (perhaps even with a desire to sell alternative licensing), and some intermediate libraries makes my work available under a more permissive license, only wrapped in a different programming interface.

What's the procedure for resolving such potential issues? Post it here and ask for advice?

With Fedora's system library exception, that should never be an issue for Fedora itself, but downstream users might be led to assume that the license of a particular library is more permissive than it actually is.

On Wed, 2013-11-20 at 15:48 -0500, Tom Callaway wrote: > For OpenSSL, we consider that a system library, so the point is somewhat > irrelevant in that case. Of course, we should not let that dissuade people from porting to GnuTLS and rendering the question irrelevant for that reason instead :)

On 11/21/2013 03:42 AM, Florian Weimer wrote: > What's the procedure for resolving such potential issues? Post it here > and ask for advice? Yes.

On 12/16/2013 01:00 PM, Florian Weimer wrote: > On 11/21/2013 04:59 PM, Tom Callaway wrote: >> On 11/21/2013 03:42 AM, Florian Weimer wrote: >>> What's the procedure for resolving such potential issues? Post it here >>> and ask for advice? >> >> Yes. > > Okay, my concern is with the jbigkit (GPLv2+) dependency of libtiff > (under its own, MIT-like license). The GPLed code is used to decode > JBIG1 parts of TIFF images. Okay. Is there a specific libtiff consumer that is GPLv2+ incompatible?

On 12/17/2013 10:06 PM, Florian Weimer wrote: > On 12/17/2013 02:57 PM, Tom Callaway wrote: >> On 12/16/2013 01:00 PM, Florian Weimer wrote: >>> On 11/21/2013 04:59 PM, Tom Callaway wrote: >>>> On 11/21/2013 03:42 AM, Florian Weimer wrote: >>>>> What's the procedure for resolving such potential issues? Post it >>>>> here >>>>> and ask for advice? >>>> >>>> Yes. >>> >>> Okay, my concern is with the jbigkit (GPLv2+) dependency of libtiff >>> (under its own, MIT-like license). The GPLed code is used to decode >>> JBIG1 parts of TIFF images. >> >> Okay. Is there a specific libtiff consumer that is GPLv2+ incompatible? > > Candidates are: > > graphviz (EPL), hylafax+ (libtiff and BSD with advertising), gnuplot. > > InsightToolkit (ASL 2.0) might qualify as well, depending on whether the > GPLv3 upgrade can heal the original GPlv2 vs ASL 2.0 conflict. Same for > ghostscript (AGPLv3+ and Redistributable, no modification permitted). > > These are only direct dependencies. Indirect dependencies will need > some coding before I can come up with a list. Are there any final comments on this matter?