Bug 183915 - Possible LGPL violation with dovecot
Summary: Possible LGPL violation with dovecot
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Classification: Red Hat
Component: dovecot
Version: 4.0
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
: ---
Assignee: Petr Rockai
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2006-03-03 18:12 UTC by Daniel Qarras
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:07 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-10-04 14:08:39 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


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Description Daniel Qarras 2006-03-03 18:12:46 UTC
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 10:57:23 UTC
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 08:54:48 UTC
Any news with this?

Comment 3 Daniel Qarras 2006-09-20 20:17:36 UTC
So, any news with this now?

Comment 4 Petr Rockai 2006-10-04 14:08:39 UTC
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.


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