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List:       pidgin-devel
Subject:    plugins with questionable licensing
From:       Paul Aurich <paul () darkrain42 ! org>
Date:       2009-07-31 3:24:20
Message-ID: 4A7263E4.8090703 () darkrain42 ! org
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We became aware last week of two Pidgin plugins [1][2] that appear to hav=
e
licensing issues.

The dexrex plugin is closed source and appears to talk over a local socke=
t
to another process (based on looking at the strings output), but does not=

link against any other libraries.

It was explained to James Toy (the person representing the dexrex plugin)=

that, as the plugin links with Pidgin, it needs to be GPL-licensed and he=

said he was going to work on that.

Stu then discovered on Friday that the im-history.com plugins have
issues.[3]  The Windows plugin is GPL licensed (source included), but lin=
ks
against "imhproxy.dll".

What do we think the next steps to take here are? I contacted James Toy o=
n
IRC earlier today, but have not yet gotten a reply. Someone likely needs =
to
contact im-history.com if we decide that there's an issue there (The linu=
x
plugin sounds OK, but the windows plugin definitely sounds like a GPL
violation to me).

~Paul

[1] https://www.dexrex.com/download/linux
[2] http://www.im-history.com/downloads
[3] <&nosnilmot> in addition to the suspect dexrex plugin it seems
im-history.com's plugins are dubious too:
the windows plugin claims to be GPL licensed (and includes the plugin
source) but it uses what appears to be a non-free library "imhproxy.dll",=

the linux version is suspect too - it is a perl plugin that talks some IP=
C
over a local socket to a non-free binary app



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