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OpenLDAP Licenseing issues



* Kurt D. Zeilenga (Kurt@OpenLDAP.org) wrote:
> s/license/complete copyright notice/
> 
> That is, read the whole COPYRIGHT file (and then read some more).

Very well, I've done so.  The results of my work bring up a number of
questions, perhaps opening up a larger can of worms than was expected.
I found a total of 15 distinct licenses in the OpenLDAP source tree as
of version 2.1.17.  I also found some files which had copyright
statements alone with 'All Rights Reserved.' which would imply that they
are not distributable.  These files and their associated copyright
statements are at the end of this email.

A number of files did not include a Copyright statement at all.  For the
rest of this discussion I am going to assume that they fall under the
OpenLDAP Public License unless you tell me otherwise.

Of those 15 licenses there are a few questions when it comes to GPL
interaction.  In the UoC license (Regents of the University of 
California Berkley) there is the infamous 'advertising clause'.  The
Regents have however, from my understanding, retroactively removed that
clause from all of their licenses, at the request of the FSF.  In the HC
(Howard Chu) and PM (Pierangelo Masarati) there is 'should' do this
and a 'should' do that.  If those are to be interpreted as 'must' then
they conflict with the GPL.  'should', however, can also be interpreted
as a request, in which case there isn't a conflict.  The UoC, JC (Juan
C. Gomez) and MA (Mark Adamson) licenses don't grant the right to 
distributed modified versions, which is in conflict with the GPL.  The
OL2 (OpenLDAP License 2) license doesn't grant modification either but
only covers one file (./contrib/ldapc++/LICENSE).

The files below which are Pierangelo Masarati or University of Michigan
I expect are unintentional omissions and should really be under the PM
or UoM licenses respectively.  The TimesTen Performance Software files
appear to likely be distributed illegally.

The results of my work are located here:
http://www.snowman.net/ldap-license-notes.txt
The licenses which I found (except the OpenLDAP Public License) are
listed here with their 'short' names (which appear on the first file):
http://www.snowman.net/ldap_licenses.txt

These files themselves are placed in the public domain, as much as they
can be considering I copied the licenses texts from copyrighted files.  
I would encourage their inclusion in the OpenLDAP tree as a quick 
reference to all of the licenses and what files they cover.  As
opporunity allows I may look at the differences between 2.1.17 and
2.1.20 to see if any changes need to be made.

I am cc'ing debian-legal on this so that they may look at the list and
the set of licenses and give their opinion on the subject.

My current feeling is that without change OpenLDAP will have to be moved
into the 'non-free' section of Debian along with all of its libraries.
The numerous LDAP-using applications which are GPL would have to be
split into two packages with the LDAP-using portion going into the
contrib section of Debian and the rest remaining in main.  If packages
can not be split they would need to be moved entirely into contrib.

I look forward to discussing these issues and hope there can be some
resolution here.  Perhaps the offending licenses and the files they
cover can be changed with permission of the copyright owners or their
contents reimplemented under a more reasonable license.

	Yours truly,

		Stephen Frost

./servers/slapd/back-sql/rdbms_depend/timesten/dnreverse/Makefile
  (c) Copyright 1996-1998, TimesTen Performance Software. - All rights reserved. - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./servers/slapd/back-sql/rdbms_depend/timesten/dnreverse/dnreverse.cpp
  (c) Copyright 1996-1998, TimesTen Performance Software. - All rights reserved. - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./servers/slapd/back-meta/Changes
  Pierangelo Masarati - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./servers/slapd/back-ldap/Changes
  Pierangelo Masarati - All Rights reserved. - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./doc/man/man5/slapd-meta.5
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Pierangelo Masarati - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/open.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/abandon.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getdn.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/delete.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getattr.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/addentry.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/result.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  Novell - OpenLDAP Public License
./libraries/libldap/free.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/compare.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/kbind.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/sbind.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getvalues.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getentry.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/url.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE 
./libraries/libldap/cache.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/search.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/os-local.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  PADL Software Pty Ltd - No Statement
./libraries/libldap/bind.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/ldap-int.h
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/unbind.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/modrdn.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  Juan C. Gomez - JC License
./libraries/libldap/filter.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/os-ip.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/modify.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/add.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/request.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  Novell - OpenLDAP Public License
./libraries/liblber/etest.c
  OpenLDAP Foundation - OpenLDAP Public License
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE

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