Re: [bug-inetutils] Re: telnet cleanup

[Ted Smith]

On Tue, 2009-06-09 at 02:22 -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> What is the proper way to solve this?  Shouldn't the files contain
>    a FSF copyright line?  And shouldn't future contributions, owned by
>    the FSF, be GPLv3+ rather than BSD licensed?  For example, see
>    patch below that just adds a GPLv3 template at the top.
> 
> All contributions to inetutils are licensed under the GPL (latest
> version), and copyrighted by the FSF.  This is a simple mistake on our
> part that we forgot to add the relevant notice to this particular
> file.
> 
> If you look at commands.c, then you will notice that the copyright
> notice comes _after_ the modified BSD license notice, it should really
> come before.  Nothing for you to worry if you don't feel inclined to
> fix it though.
> 
>    +++ auth.c 2009-06-09 07:03:08.000000000 +0200
>    +  Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> 
> All years that inetutils was modified should be listed here since the
> file was introduced.
> 
> So,
> 
> Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 2003, 2004, 2005
>               2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> 
> Since we added the file in 1997 from BSD4.4-Lite, and we have done
> changes in inetutils each year since then.
> 
> 
> I noticed that auth.c contains a MIT license, which seems to have a
> annoying clause,
> 
> ... WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to use, copy, modify, and
> distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and
> [without fee] is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright ...
> 
> `without fee', seems to mean that commercial distribution is not
> allowed, and thus making it incompatible with the GPL, and non-free as
> well.  Do people agree with this reading?  If so, we must rewrite, or
> remove these parts of inetutils.
> 
> 
Are you sure it doesn't mean "no fee is required to use, copy, modify,
and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose"? I
think it's disclaiming any royalties that might be implicitly required.

IANAL, of course.

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