On Wednesday 28 August 2002 15:31, Andrew Gillham wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 11:30:04PM +0100, David Laight wrote:
> > > 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.
> 
> As GPL or LGPL?  And how does this affect commercial redistribution
> of NetBSD?

It affects it in that prohibition of reverse-engineering is no longer an 
option for those who wish to redistribute software that links with even LGPL 
software.

LGPL does taint the resulting executable--if not the source code used to build 
it--by allowing any user to completely and totally reverse any executable 
linked in with any LGPL'd code and re-write portions of it to suit any 
internal need.