[openssl-dev] The new OpenSSL license should be made GPLv2 compatible

[Brian Smith]

Hi,

I'm one of the people that received the email asking for permission to
relicense code to the new license, Apache 2.0. A major problem with
the Apache 2.0 license is that it is frequently seen as being
incompatible with the GPL2 license. Although many people consider it
to be compatible with the GPL3 license, many people also object to the
GPL3 license for important (to them) reasons. Therefore, I think it is
important for the OpenSSL license to be compatible with GPL2 too.

In the past, I created a library licensed under Apache 2.0,
mozilla::pkix. However, Red Hat and Mozilla requested that I
additionally license it under the GPLv2 so they could use it in
GPLv2-licensed contexts, and I did so.

Similarly, LLVM is working on moving to the Apache 2.0 license and
they ran into similar problems. They also made the effort to
explicitly grant the right to use the relicensed code under the GPLv2.
See [1] for details.

I think it is important that OpenSSL do something similar to
explicitly allow using OpenSSL code under the GPLv2 before any
relicensing takes place.

Thanks for your consideration.

[1] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-September/104778.html

Cheers,
Brian
-- 
https://briansmith.org/