Hello, On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 12:12:45AM +0200, Marius Bakke wrote: > Proprietary software companies wishing to use or incorporate Covered > Software within their programs must contact Licensor to purchase a > separate license. Open source developers who wish to incorporate parts > of Covered Software into free software with conflicting licenses may > write Licensor to request a waiver of terms. > > From <https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/LICENSE>. > > So a "proprietary software company" cannot use or incorporate nmap > within a program, even if that program is free (as in software)?
the formulation is weird, but I am reading this more as "you cannot incorporate this software into a proprietary one", which more or less summarises the difference between the GPL and the LGPL. In guix/licenses.scm, the previous entry for nmap (dating from 2016), instead of providing a link to https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ , gave one to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Nmap , which classifies the license as free, but incompatible with the GPL. It would be nice to get feedback from the FSF on the question, indeed; but I am less pessimistic than you! Andreas