kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Wayne,

On 02.05.2016 21:09, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:

> Do we have any Debian developers on our mailing list?  I though I saw a
> Simon Richter on Planet Debian.  Is that you Simon?

Yes.

> Can someone tell me
> why the Debian package devs decided to build KiCad with the GitHub
> plugin disabled?  Is it a build issue or a licensing issue?

That is a licencing problem, one of the GNOME people has a short
summary[1]. The way out is to either drop OpenSSL or get permission from
the copyright holders to add an exception clause to the licence and not
link against any GPL'd code that doesn't have such an exception itself.

This licence incompatibility technically makes all binaries
undistributable, and even if no one is actively suing people, this may
be an impediment to enforcing the GPL in case it is ever necessary, and
leads to a bit of legal uncertainty for some distributors (for example,
German and Austrian law would allow other vendors of EDA software to
request an injunction against the distribution of these binaries, and if
granted, the distributor would be liable for their attorneys' fees).

Debian at some point decided to simply follow the letter of the law,
which was instrumental in the creation of the GNUTLS project.

I think we should be able to drop OpenSSL in favour of GNUTLS with
little effort, which would avoid the problem.

   Simon

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

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