[Samba] Linking libsmbclient with GPLv2 Code

[Jeremy Allison]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 10:27:50AM -0400, Kyle Edwards wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'm not sure who to ask about this, but I have a licensing question.
> I'm writing a utility to allow Git to connect to SMB shares, which
> uses libsmbclient. I was thinking about using libgit2 in my program:
> http://libgit2.github.com/ . This library is licensed as GPLv2 only,
> with a linking exception to link to any program without restriction.
> 
> My understanding is that, since libsmbclient is licensed under
> GPLv3/later, and libgit2 is GPLv2 only, and since GPLv3 and v2 are
> incompatible, I can't do this without asking for permission from the
> copyright holders. (And yes, I do plan on distributing this program to
> others.) So, my question is this: would it be possible for me to
> obtain a license to link libsmbclient against libgit2? Obviously all
> of my original code will be released under a GPLv3-compatible license
> (I was thinking either GPLv3 or BSD/X11/etc.)

No, sorry. Using GPLv3 only is an antisocial act
against  the Free Software community, and should not
be encouraged.

Please ask the libgit2 authors to upgrade their
license to at least GPLv2 or later.

Thanks,

Jeremy.