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Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:51:40 -0800
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From: Mike Cooper <mike.cooper@magnicomp.com>
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To: Tom Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com>
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CC: mcooper@magnicomp.com, Jiri Moskovcak <jmoskovc@redhat.com>
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Subject: Re: rdist licensing
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Tom,
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You have indeed reached the Michael A Cooper listed in the code.
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I have no problems with rdist being under a BSD license. That was the intended
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direction before I ran out of time doing development.
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mike
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On 02/17/2011 07:01 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:
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> Michael,
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>
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> We're trying to track down the "Michael A. Cooper" who is listed as a
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> copyright holder for the "rdist" software program. Hopefully, this is
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> you, but if not, please let us know and accept our apologies in advance.
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>
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> In a regular licensing audit of Fedora (a popular distribution of Linux
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> that includes rdist), we discovered this license:
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>
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> /*
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> * Copyright (c) 1992-1998 Michael A. Cooper.
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> * This software may be freely used and distributed provided it is not
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> * sold for profit or used in part or in whole for commercial gain
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> * without prior written agreement, and the author is credited
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> * appropriately.
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> */
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>
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> It is a requirement that all software in Fedora be available under a
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> Free Software License. Unfortunately, the language in this license which
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> prevents it from being "sold for profit or used in part or in whole for
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> commercial gain without prior written agreement" is considered a
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> commercial use restriction.
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>
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> Commercial use restrictions make a license non-free.
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>
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> In addition, this license does not grant any permissions to modify,
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> which is a requirement for a Free Software license.
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>
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> The rest of the rdist code seems to be under a normal "BSD" license
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> which is Free.
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>
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> Would you consider giving permission to use your copyrighted work in
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> rdist under the same BSD license as the rest of the codebase?
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>
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> Thanks,
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>
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> Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal
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