Bug 183915 – Possible LGPL violation with dovecot

Bug 183915 - Possible LGPL violation with dovecot

Summary:	Possible LGPL violation with dovecot

Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG

Aliases:	None

Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Classification:	Red Hat
Component:	dovecot (Show other bugs)
Sub Component:
Version:	4.0
Hardware:	All Linux

Priority	medium Severity medium
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Assigned To:	Petr Rockai
QA Contact:
Docs Contact:

URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:

Depends On:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2006-03-03 13:12 EST by Daniel Qarras
Modified:	2007-11-30 17:07 EST (History)
CC List:	0 users

See Also:
Fixed In Version:
Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points:	---
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:	2006-10-04 10:08:39 EDT
Type:	---
Regression:	---
Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---
CRM:
Verified Versions:
Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---
RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---

Attachments	(Terms of Use)
Add an attachment (proposed patch, testcase, etc.)

Groups: None (edit)

Description Daniel Qarras 2006-03-03 13:12:46 EST

Description of problem:

Dovecot is an IMAP/POP server mostly licensed under the LGPL 2.1. LGPL 2.1
section 2 says:

"a)  The modified work must itself be a software library."

See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html for full license text.

Red Hat SRPM contains patches that modify dovecot but the "modified work" is
still a server, not "a software library". So it seems that at least in theory
here might be a violation of LGPL.

Additional info:

dovecot was just one of many candidates that are licensed under the LGPL,
modified, and not distributed as "a software library". If we read the LGPL
literally, this might be a problem. But I hope you prove me being wrong. If not,
then I don't know what to do with all those non-library RPMs distributed under
LGPL today.

Comment 1 Petr Rockai 2006-03-06 05:57:23 EST

I'll go and check if dovecot links with anything GPL-incompatible. If no, we 
can easily opt for plain GPL so this becomes a non-issue. If not, i'll see how 
is 2a) to be interpreted in context of non-libraries. *Goes investigating*.

Comment 2 Daniel Qarras 2006-05-29 04:54:48 EDT

Any news with this?

Comment 3 Daniel Qarras 2006-09-20 16:17:36 EDT

So, any news with this now?

Comment 4 Petr Rockai 2006-10-04 10:08:39 EDT

The issue is moot, since we link against mysql client libs which are GPL which 
means we have to use GPL anyway. Although i believe that modifying LGPL 
program and distributing again under LGPL is legal, I am not a lawyer so i 
can't help you much on that.

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.