ccan code breaks older build farm systems

simo idra at samba.org
Thu Jul 7 08:13:42 MDT 2011


On Thu, 2011-07-07 at 15:25 +0200, Michael Adam wrote:
> I was understanding  from the GNU page above that we do for example
> violate our own GPLv3+ license of the server code if we directly
> link in the LGPL ccan code or for instance the talloc and tdb
> code. It states that if you directly use LGPL code (i.e. tdb,
> talloc, ccan, ...) in a GPL project, than you have to relicense
> it. If you link it as a library however, that is ok.

We do not violate our license, as the LGPL allow us to link against
samba. It is true that the LGPL imposes slightly different conditions
when you link code in statically, but because we release all the source
code, it is not really an issue.

> So at least in the samba3 autoconf build, we have a problem since we
> do
> link the plain object files into smbd if we link talloc or tdb
> statically. It might be different in s4 and with the waf build.

The way ccan is structured I think the waf build makes no difference.

> That being said, let me state clearly that I am not an expert on
> licenses, but that I am trying to understand what I read on the
> GNU documents. So if anyone (Simo??) could shed some light on the
> licensing issues for me, I would be really greatful! 

I don't think there is a problem keeping the original license, we've
done the same with other licenses for ages. It is given for granted
though, that the whole smbd/samba binary and source code is released
under the terms of the GPLv3 when released as a whole.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer <simo at samba.org>
Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc. <simo at redhat.com>



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