Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Possible license problem with Ethereal and OpenSSL

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2001 at 11:21:28PM -0500, ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I don't know the specifics but the following is included in the
> license for fetchmail 5.8.17 (5.9.0 most recent version):
> 
>   Specific permission is granted for this code to be linked to OpenSSL
>   (this is necessary becuse the OpenSSL license is not GPL-compatible).
> 
> Because ethereal is GPL, I presume it is not legal to redistribute
> binaries linked against OpenSSL. Any problems adding the above clause
> to the ethereal license to make it legal?

Do we, in fact, link against any SSL library, as in a library that
implements SSL?

"AC_ETHEREAL_SSL_CHECK" is a somewhat misnamed macro; in fact, the
library it deals with is a crypto library, and we link against that
because some versions of UCD SNMP/NETSNMP apparently require it, not
because we use it for anything related to SSL.

Is any version of that crypto library licensed under a
non-GPL-compatible license?

> According to packet-ssl.c, the copyright owner is:
> /* packet-ssl.c
>  * Routines for ssl dissection
>  * Copyright (c) 2000-2001, Scott Renfro <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> so he would need to give his permission for the license change. I don't
> know if it is sufficient for only packet-ssl.c to have the license
> change mentioned above.

As per the above, we don't, as far as I know, use any SSL library, so
the fact that "packet-ssl.c" happens to be an SSL dissector doesn't, as
far as I know, matter - Scott's permission is no more or less relevant
than anybody else's permission.  If anybody needs to give permission for
a license change, *everybody* who's contributed code to Ethereal needs
to do so, as far as I know.