[Nagiosplug-devel] nagiosplug licensing is self-conflicting

[sean finney]

hi folks,

something that recently came to my attention is that there are potential
licensing conflicts within the nagios-plugins project.  

as nagios-plugins are a GPL'd project, that means they can not be compiled
against 3rd party API's that do not meet the criteria of the GPL.  the
most noticable issue is regarding openssl, though there are perhaps others
into which i would have to look more closely.  i'll start with the
former, because i have some experience dealing with it in other
projects.

=== part 1 - openssl ===

wrt openssl, it is unfortunately not compatible with the "stock" gpl
on many distributions (including debian), because it is not considered
"part of the operating system" and thus is a "derived work".  The solution
in this case is fairly straightforward.  any of the following would
be sufficient: 

- change the license to something that doesn't conflict (lgpl, bsd-style, etc)
- modify the code to be able to use other ssl implementations (like
  gnutls), and leave it to the distributions that have the problem to
  choose the non-conflicting option.
- put an addendum to the current copyright such that it is "GPL,
  but exception is made for linking against OpenSSL".   this is what
  the folks at mysql have done, btw.

peronally, i prefer the second option, but it's also the most work.  for
more information on this particular issue, here's some helpful
information:

a crash-course into the problem:

http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html

openssl project's recommendations:

http://www.openssl.org/support/faq.html#LEGAL2


=== part 2 - other potential issues ===

in addition to the openssl issue described above, i foresee potential
problems with other plugins which make use of api's or command-line
programs which are also not GPL-compatible.  the only other two that
immediately come to mind are lmstat and qmail (neither of which are GPL
compatible but are used), but i haven't looked closely into ./contrib,
where other problems are likely to exist.

what to do about these is probably a touchier subject, and i'd
appreciate any ideas that you folks might have.


	sean
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