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Re: OpenLDAP Licenseing issues



On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 12:23:30PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:

> 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).

Well, the foray into the side question of the HC and PM licenses is at
an end; Howard has pointed out to me that none of the affected code is
*part* of the LDAP libraries, and therefore GPL-compatibility is not a
concern.

After taking Stephen's ldap-license-notes.txt file and cutting out all
but the include and libraries directories (based on the contents of
libraries/libldap/Makefile and libraries/liblber/Makefile), then
grepping out a list of licenses that are GPL-compatible, I have the
following results:

./include/rewrite.h
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM license
./libraries/libldap/open.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/abandon.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getdn.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/delete.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getattr.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/addentry.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/result.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/free.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/compare.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/kbind.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/sbind.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getvalues.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/getentry.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/url.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/cache.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/search.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/os-local.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/bind.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/ldap-int.h
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/unbind.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/modrdn.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  Juan C. Gomez - JC License
./libraries/libldap/filter.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/os-ip.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/modify.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/add.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/libldap/request.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
./libraries/librewrite/subst.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/rewrite-map.h
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/config.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/rule.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/parse.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/map.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/ldapmap.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/rewrite-int.h
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/rewrite.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/session.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/params.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/context.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/Copyright
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/var.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/librewrite/info.c
  Pierangelo Masarati - PM License
./libraries/liblber/etest.c
  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE

For reference, the grep command used is:

$ grep -vE 'NO COPYRIGHT|(UoM|CRL|UoC2?|ISC|IBM|OpenLDAP Public) License|Public Domain|PADL Software Pty Ltd - No Statement' ldap-license-notes.txt

I am assuming that all files without copyright statements are
effectively under the OpenLDAP Public License.

Note that, from the above, the librewrite code and headers are not part
of the libldap2 package and can be ignored.  Thus, where the
GPL compatibility of libldap2 itself is concerned, the problem reduces
to the question of DFSG-freeness, as the only remaining licenses that
are present in the code comprising libldap.so and liblber.so are also
non-free:

  Regents of the University of Michigan - All rights reserved - NOT DISTRIBUTABLE
  Juan C. Gomez - JC License

The Regents of the University of Michigan license -- or lack thereof --
is obviously the biggest problem for the package.  I haven't examined
./libraries/libldap/modrdn.c in detail to see how much of the code might
need to be reimplemented in the absence of a license resolution, but it
does seem to refer specifically to some LDAPv3 functionality added to
the file.

> 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.

If we can get confirmation of this, it would resolve all questions of
DFSG-freeness with the exception of the JC license mentioned above, the
MA license (covering ./servers/slapd/saslauthz.c, not mentioned in the
earlier email), and the following:

> The TimesTen Performance Software files appear to likely be
> distributed illegally.

> ./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

These files seem fairly irrelevant, and, I believe, can be safely
removed from the Debian package to satisfy license requirements and DFSG
requirements.  The OpenLDAP Foundation, of course, should be sure that
they are not themselves infringing anyone's copyright by distributing
these files.

Regards,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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