<posted & mailed> Joachim Breitner wrote:
> Hi, > > I was just about to package "psybnc"[1], a popular irc bouncer. > > A closer look into the src/ dir revealed that the author seems to have > followed the Free Software spirit by not re-inventing a lot of wheels, > but didn't pay close attention to legal stuff... > > His own works are GPLed, and have correct copyright notes. But there are > two files that worry me: > > snprintf.c: <snip complicated license statement> > And the second file, bsd-setenv.c: <snip 4-clause BSD> > If I payed attention, both of these contain the "bad" advertising clause > that make them incompatible with the GPL, and thus the psybnc > distribution impossible. Is that right? Yes. > Is it also right that finding re-licenced versions of bsd-setenv.c > (without the Advertising Clause) would solve the problem for this file? Yes. > Or can I just re-licence the file myself, since BSD officially changed > the licence for all their works (or something)? Well, Berkeley's relicensing statement is here: ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change As long as the file is a "BSD Unix" file or part of the "Berkeley Software Distribution", it seems to be relicensed. You can determine whether it is by looking at *BSD for the file; I'd guess, offhand, that it is. -- The Apache team has been trying to switch to a GPL compatible license. It's likely that you can find a relicensed version of the original Apache snprintf.c file under the Apache License 2.0, but unfortunately it's not clear yet whether that's GPL-compatible; eventually some version of the Apache license should be though. Given what this Apache-licensed file actually is, I'd suggest finding a GPL-compatibly-licensed snprintf implementation and tweaking it to behave like the one in psybnc (which appears to simply *remove* functionality). -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
