> I want to leverage the functionality of the secstore for a different > application (I'm not yet ready to publicize the details, but I will to > anyone who shows some interest), but this seems to put a bit of a > spanner in the works. Naturally, I can prototype with it, but in the > long term I have either to licence the PAK stuff (who do I contact?) > or to replace the code with an analogous facility. > > Has the licence been waved for p9p? What are the terms of the > licence? Does anyone know of licence free options to perform a > similar function? I suppose I ought to ask what is so special about > PAK, too or, more to the point, what does it do that made Bell Labs > choose it for the secstore? Maybe if I understood PAK better I'd be > able to decide whether it is as important in my application as it was > for the secstore.
I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. The Lucent Public License permits redistribution of the programs contained in the Plan 9 distribution, secstore included, in source or binary forms, and includes appropriate copyright and patent licenses. I believe that is the only license needed for me to distribute the p9p programs. I have no special arrangement with Lucent. The details are in /LICENSE. Of course, in such licensing situations, I have never understood where the line is between redistributing the entire Plan 9 software (obviously permitted, with copyright and patent licenses granted) and redistributing just a few snippets of Plan 9 code that make up an insignificant part of a larger program that happens to use techniques from those same patents. I'm fairly certain p9p is on the first side of that line, but I still don't know where the line is. If this really matters to you, you should talk to a lawyer. If you're not using Plan 9 code, you might look at SRP. I don't think the licensing issues are any less murky than PAK, but they are at least more widely studied. Russ
