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- Since Debian now allows crypto in its main US repository, there is
- only one remaining reason that SSL support is disabled for ORBit2:
- license incompatibility. The only fully-functioning SSL library
- that Debian has so far is OpenSSL, which includes the old, deprecated
- BSD advertising clause, which is incompatible with ORBit2's LGPL
- license.
-
- There are a couple of possibilities that may eventually help resolve
- this issue:
-
- First: the OpenSSL license could be fixed. Almost nobody uses the
- BSD-with-advertising-clause license anymore, including BSD.
- Unfortunately, if this were a simple thing to do, I suspect it would
- have been done already.
-
- Second: another SSL library might become available. There are a
- couple of potential candidates on the horizon. One, GnuTLS, has its
- own licensing issues, but there may be ways to work around that. The
- other potential candidate is the SSL code from Mozilla -- rumor has it
- that this may be made into a separate library someday.
-
- In the mean time, while Debian cannot legally distribute an SSL-enabled
- version of ORBit2, it is certainly ok for you to BUILD one for your own
- use. If you wish to do this, install libssl-dev, then get the Debian
- source for ORBit2, and edit debian/rules, adding "--with-ssl" to the
- configure line. In theory, the ORBit2 packages built this way should be
- a drop-in replacement for the official packages, but I have not tried
- this, and cannot guarantee it.
-
- I hope that all of these issues get resolved someday, but I cannot say
- when that might happen. Such is life, sometimes.
-
- cheers
- Chris Waters <xtifr@debian.org>
- (modifications for ORBit2 from Sebastian Rittau <srittau@debian.org>)
-