Re: No more ports of unfree software

On Sun, 25 May 2003, Jolan Luff wrote:

> On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 01:52:48AM +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
>
> If this is really going to happen, then these questions, and many more
> will need to answered.
>

OK I'll confuse the issue even more.

Take the Netetalk software now being developed on sourceforge. Not the Umich 990130 < versions.

Distributed within the archive Netatalk-1.6.1.tar.gz is a file called COPYRIGHT. It contains UMICH BSD license, Adrian SUN license, SUN license

Copyright (c) 1990,1996 Regents of The University of Michigan. All Rights Reserved.

    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 notice appears in all copies and     that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear     in supporting documentation, and that the name of The University     of Michigan not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to     distribution of the software without specific, written prior     permission. This software is supplied as is without expressed or     implied warranties of any kind.

This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

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Modifications for Appleshare IP and other files copyrighted by Adrian Sun are under the following copyright:

    Copyright (c) 1997,1998,1999,2000 Adrian Sun (asun@cobalt.com)     All Rights Reserved.

    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 notice appears in all copies and     that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear     in supporting documentation. This software is supplied as is     without expressed or implied warranties of any kind.

Solaris code is encumbered by the following:

    Copyright (C) 1996 by Sun Microsystems Computer Co.

    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 notice appear in all     copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission     notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is     provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Now the sourceforge site states

http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/

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It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Now NO GNU Public license ships with the distro. No mention of the GNU License ships with the distro, just on a web page.

All the files in the package appear to have this an nothing else.

/*
 * $Id: main.c,v 1.20 2002/10/04 15:15:05 srittau Exp $
 *
 * Copyright (c) 1990,1993 Regents of The University of Michigan.
 * All Rights Reserved.  See COPYRIGHT.
 */

So what code, code changes, are covered by what license?

Now the Sun license states

"provided that the above copyright notice appear in all  copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission  notice appear in supporting documentation"

The copyright notice only appears in one file. COPYRIGHT. I does not appear in man pages, or any other "supporting" documenation.

I suppose what I trying to say is that licensing world wide is completely F^&^%^ed UP.

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There is really no way of knowing which of all of those licenses cover what code, what files, etc, etc, etc.

Is putting the statement "that it is now covered by the GPL" on an obsecure web page legal enough to cover the software????????

How does one interperate crap like this?

Ian McWilliam
Technical Officer
School of Computing & IT
University of Western Sydney.

"Technician was the lowest rank on this ship. even the man who changed the bog roll was higher than us." - Dave lister, Red Dwarf.

Scanned by SCIT E-Mail Gateway http://www.cit.uws.edu.au Received on Wed May 28 23:51:16 2003