Relicensing OpenSSL

Posted Mar 24, 2017 17:32 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Relicensing OpenSSL by trey
Parent article: Relicensing OpenSSL

I'm a huge fan of reductio ad absurdum as an arguing style, but it didn't take me long to learn that this doesn't work on the Law.

Theo's "GCC licence change" plan rather than copying the OpenSSL plan is instead a massive oversimplification of it. This doubtless feels unimportant to Theo, if it's OK for OpenSSL to have their process, why shouldn't he propose this much quicker one for GCC ? But alas, the specifics matter, courts really care about the specifics. Lawyers looked at what OpenSSL were doing and said "Yes, that can work" but they didn't even glance at what Theo is doing.

I think I also detect that Theo has the idea that this is a vote or something. It's not a vote, when this type of exercise is undertaken, you zap all the stuff that's objected to. People who say "No" don't get to block everybody else, their work is just removed and things carry on without it. Now, if that's almost everybody, then sure, it may have the effect that the leadership change their minds, but getting five or fifty OpenBSD people to write angry emails doesn't do that. OpenBSD already has libressl.

Relicensing OpenSSL

Posted Mar 25, 2017 20:42 UTC (Sat) by st (guest, #96477) [Link]

I don't think this is a serious attempt to relicense GCC.

Relicensing OpenSSL

Posted Mar 31, 2017 13:58 UTC (Fri) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link]

> People who say "No" don't get to block everybody else, their work is just removed and things carry on without it.

Actually, on the mailing list, one of the core developers said that they do not plan to remove code from developers they were not able to contact. That's a big no-no in my book.