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On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Oleg Polyanski wrote:

>David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk> writes:
>
>> > Does anyone have any idea how much of the available PAM code is
>> > BSD licensed versus GPL or other?
>> > e.g. Will it be necessary to implement the basic PAM support
>> > from scratch?  Will we be able to use a large percentage of PAM
>> > modules in a BSD environment without worrying about the GPL?
>>
>> Well if they are GPL, then they can be used as shared libraries
>> without 'tainting' the programs that are build with them.  However
>> a static link enforces the GPL on the entire binary.
>
> I was pretty sure that shared libraries can taint the main
> binary as well as static can.

It's a somewhat loose distinction, but it has been resolved that
loadable modules do not taint the loading program (for obvious reasons).

This is depended on, by, eg, Linux kernel module vendors.

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@draga.com
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