Use of OpenSSH PAM code under the GPL

[Damien Miller]

On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Andrew Bartlett wrote:

> One of the things I have always liked about OpenSSH is the readability
> of the code, and for that reason I have looked to reuse the code
> elsewhere, in this case Samba.
>
> I have prepared and submitted a patch to Samba 2.2 to give it better PAM
> support, which uses some of the OpenSSH code.  Questions have however
> been raised about the compatibility of the license on that code with the
> GNU GPL v2 (or later) used in the rest of Samba, and it is for that
> reason that I ask if it is possible for you to relicense/dual license
> the code?

My understanding is that the two-term BSD license which most of the
OpenSSH code is licensed under is fully compatible with the GPL (it
lacks what RMS refers to as the ``obnoxious advertising clause'').

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
seems to bear this out:

> The modified BSD license.
>
> This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the
> advertising clause. It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft
> free software license with no particular problem. It is
> compatible with the GNU GPL.

-d

-- 
| Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org> \ ``E-mail attachments are the poor man's
| http://www.mindrot.org          /   distributed filesystem'' - Dan Geer