Mailing List Archive: DKIM, GPLv3

DKIM, GPLv3

Apr 12, 2008, 5:10 AM

Post #1 of 3 (971 views)

I'd like to start shipping Fedora's Exim package with DKIM support, so
I'm looking at the licensing issues.

Once upon a time, the only available DomainKeys support was under a
non-free licence. Now we have libdkim, which is Apache-licensed.

However, the Apache v2 licence isn't compatible with GPLv2; only with
GPLv3. Which is OK, theoretically, because Exim is licensed under GPLv2
'or any later version' as far as I can tell.

So I could possibly link with libdkim and ship Fedora's Exim under
GPLv3. Does anyone have a problem with that, and/pr are there parts of
Exim which are GPLv2-only without the 'or any later version'?

(Is it libdkim that people are using? It doesn't even seem to build out
of the box, or pass its own internal tests, for me.)

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Re: DKIM, GPLv3 [ In reply to ]

pnfisher at berkeley

Apr 12, 2008, 12:11 PM

Post #2 of 3 (917 views)

Permalink

David Woodhouse wrote:
>
> So I could possibly link with libdkim and ship Fedora's Exim under
> GPLv3. Does anyone have a problem with that, and/pr are there parts of
> Exim which are GPLv2-only without the 'or any later version'?

Yahoo has not licensed their DKIM patents for use under GPLv3.

From <URL:https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/920/>:

Yahoo! licenses its Necessary Patent Claims contained in the
patents and patent applications disclosed above under either of
two separate license agreements, one of which is the DomainKeys
Patent License Agreement (v1.2), and the other is the GNU General
Public License v2.0 (and no other version).

I don't understand how libdkim can be distributed under the Apache
license given the Yahoo patent terms, but IANAL.

On a somewhat related note, I started work on a DKIM implementation
for Exim last year depending only on GPLv2 compatible libraries
(libgcrypt and gnutls), but haven't had time to finish the code. The
intent was to create a small, lightweight implementation, tightly tied
to Exim, which could be distributed under terms compatible with both
Exim's and Yahoo's existing terms.

Paul

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Re: DKIM, GPLv3 [ In reply to ]

dot at dotat

Apr 14, 2008, 6:39 AM

Post #3 of 3 (898 views)

Permalink

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, David Woodhouse wrote:

> So I could possibly link with libdkim and ship Fedora's Exim under
> GPLv3. Does anyone have a problem with that, and/pr are there parts of
> Exim which are GPLv2-only without the 'or any later version'?

That will be fine: the NOTICE file covers the whole Exim distribution.

Tony.
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