IANAL

I think that it would be possible to say something like:

While hwloc is BSD licensed, it may potentially link to libraries with more restrictive license terms.

However, that is more or less true of ANY software.

For instance, if I compile some BSD licensed software on AIX with '-static' then IBM's libc ends up in my binary.

I am not saying that IBM's libc poses any specific issues, just using it as an example.

So, this is in no way a unique situation for hwloc.

I think that if hwloc were to explicitly list libpci then we start a dangerous precedent under which users may expect us to continuously "audit" the libs used on various systems.

-Paul

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Jeff Squyres (jsquyres) <jsquyres@cisco.com> wrote:

It was just pointed out to me that libpci is licensed under the GPL (not the LGPL).

Hence, even though hwloc is BSD, if it links to libpci.*, it's tainted.

IANAL, this is not legal advice, yadda yadda yadda. But does this jive with other peoples' understanding?

This has caused a problem for an unnamed vendor who wanted to ship a binary tool that linked against libhwloc (that linked against libpci). Yoinks.

The complaint to me was that hwloc needs to be clearer about this in its documentation.

Does this sound right?

--
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres@cisco.com
For corporate legal information go to: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/

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Paul H. Hargrove PHHargrove@lbl.gov

Future Technologies Group

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