Re: VPN solution(s) for Fedora Core

[Nathan Robertson <nathanr nathanr net>]

On 23/05/2004, at 2:10 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:

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> On Saturday 22 May 2004 19:06, Nathan Robertson wrote:
> > I know this will leave a bad taste in peoples mouths, but from a
> > practicality point of view the Microsoft VPN (MPPE and friends, iirc)
> > is implemented by a kernel patch in ppp CVS (providing the ppp_mppe
> > module). [...]
>
> I do believe the biggest thing is that the module taints your kernel.
> Non GPL compliant I do believe.

cobra:~# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: P
[...]
ppp_mppe               12320   0  (unused)
[...]

Damn. It's tainted, yes. Never noticed. I'm looking at the patch and 
don't see any nasty license issues - just a lack of a explicit GPL 
compatible flag set. It consists of:

- a patch to the current ppp (derived work, hence GPL).
- sha1.[ch] - in comments at the top -- "100% Public Domain"
- ppp_mppe_compress.c - "Permission to use, copy, modify, and 
distribute this software and its documentation is hereby granted, 
provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies."

So in my view it's actually a mix between GPL, public domain and a BSD 
style license. Looks GPL compatible to me. Just needs to be noted as 
explicitly so, so it doesn't taint the kernel. Am I right?

Having said that, I haven't tested it with 2.6 kernel, and the headers 
say 2.2 and 2.4 (presumably because it hasn't been tested).

Nathan.