On March 2, I wrote:
>
> Howdy, all. I just noticed that the COPYRIGHT file hasn't ever been updated
> since Richard ceded control of nmh (in fact it was out-of-date even then, as
> Richard was still doing stuff in 1999):
>
> Copyright (c) 1997-1998 Richard Coleman
> All rights reserved.
>
> Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without
> license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
> software and to distribute modified versions of this software for any
> purpose, provided that the above copyright notice and the following two
> paragraphs appear in all copies of this software.
>
> In no event shall Richard Coleman be liable to any party for direct,
> indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of
> the use of this software and its documentation, even if Richard Coleman
> has been advised of the possibility of such damage.
>
> Richard Coleman specifically disclaims any warranties, including, but
> not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness
> for a particular purpose. The software provided hereunder is on an "as
> is" basis, and Richard Coleman has no obligation to provide maintenance,
> support, updates, enhancements, or modifications.
>
> How do we want to handle this?
No one ever responded to this. Does anyone have any opinions? The only
opinion that's ever been expressed is that Richard said he thought nmh
shouldn't be released under the GPL.
I believe he was worried about bundling issues. I guess AIX still bundles
MH with its OS, and they wouldn't be able to upgrade to bundling nmh unless
they followed the GNU rules and included the source code and such (which I
don't believe they do for any other pieces of their OS). IBM may not be at
all interested in upgrading to nmh _regardless_ of its license, though --
who knows...
I don't know if there are any other commercial UNIXen that still bundle MH.
I know Ultrix did -- not sure if Digital UNIX continued (and continues??) in
that tradition.
Of course there'd be no problem with Linux, and, I guess, the *BSDs bundling
a GPL'd nmh.
I dunno, personally I don't see a super-convincing reason to not GPL nmh,
but I could certainly be swayed. It would be kind of neat for nmh to be the
official GNU project mail client (I don't believe the project currently
includes a standalone mail client??).
If not the GPL, what other open source license would be most appropriate? X
License? Apache License? BSD License? Artistic License? Others...?
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