Hello, I'm looking at a network analysis tool called 'pchar', which has the following license:
This work was first produced by an employee of Sandia National Laboratories under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. Sandia National Laboratories dedicates whatever right, title or interest it may have in this software to the public. Although no license from Sandia is needed to copy and use this software, copying and using the software might infringe the rights of others. This software is provided as-is. SANDIA DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. What bothers me is the sentence "Although no license from Sandia is needed to copy and use this software, copying and using the software might infringe the rights of others". The author himself doesn't see any problems, as he has placed pchar in the public domain, which is less restrictive than, e.g., GPL. As I understand it, the author (or Sandia, depending on which kind of agreement he has with them) still retains copyright to the software even though he released it to the public domain. Is this correct? To sum it up: 1) Is the license DFSG-free as it stands? 2) Can the author re-distribute his software under, e.g., the BSD license now, despite having released it with the above license? Thanks in advance, Pontus -- Pontus Lidman, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Software Engineer No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up. Scene: www.dc-s.com | MUD: tyme.envy.com 6969 | irc: irc.quakenet.eu.org
