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List:       elinks-dev
Subject:    [elinks-dev] libsmbclient GPLv3 license conflict
From:       Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <kon () iki ! fi>
Date:       2008-10-01 18:42:19
Message-ID: 8763ockvhw.fsf () Astalo ! kon ! iki ! fi
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Samba 3.2.0, released on 1 July 2008, switched to version 3 of
the GNU General Public License.
http://news.samba.org/releases/3.2.0/

AFAIK, this also applies to libsmbclient.  So it may be illegal
to distribute ELinks binaries linked with the current libsmbclient.

The Debian elinks 0.12~pre1-1 package is linked with libsmbclient,
but apparently with version 3.0.24, which is OK.  Also, I believe
we can legally distribute ELinks sources that use libsmbclient,
at least as long as ELinks works with some GPLv2 version of Samba.

However, it seems likely that the GPLv2 versions of Samba will
eventually become unusable because of security vulnerabilities
or Microsoft's protocol changes.  This will then force Debian
to drop SMB support from ELinks.

What can be done:

(a) Ignore the conflict.

(b) Make ELinks use the smbclient executable again, this time
    with proper quoting of metacharacters.  I am very sorry
    that I originally requested making ELinks use libsmbclient.

(c) Relicense ELinks so it's GPLv3 compatible.

Forking or relicensing Samba does not seem feasible.
And I don't know about any alternative library we could use.

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