The MIBs are not technically necessary for the SNMP protocol itself to work. In fact, most of the SNMP agent's functionality is just fine without installed MIBs. The command line clients, however, are far less useful (still usable, but much more of a pain for the operator).
If you want to get really nasty about the legal issues, consider the following snippit from RFC3414 (picking one at random, since they all have this issue): usmStatsWrongDigests OBJECT-TYPE Blumenthal & Wijnen Standards Track [Page 38] ^L RFC 3414 USM for SNMPv3 December 2002 SYNTAX Counter32 MAX-ACCESS read-only Note how the RFC format inserts headings within the MIB itself. It's unclear to me, from a perfectly legal definition, if the copyright on the "MIB" includes the page break markings. I'll let a lawyer answer that additional problem... Anyway, there is one other solution: Distribute the snmp packages without any MIBs in place but with a auto-post-installation tool that could go grab all the RFCs, extract the MIBs, modify them so they're not broken and then install them on the system. That only removes the "free" problem aspect from the distribution itself and leaves it up to the user whether to run the post-installation tool to make the tools significantly more usable but reduce the "freeness" of the system (and you could even print a nice friendly warning). The crux of the problem is there is nothing you can do to fix it because the problem stems from far upstream (the IETF Trust), which is beyond the bounds of anything any of us control. Maybe your lawyer should talk to their lawyer and beg for a solution and explain the problem. (it's actually been discussed in the past surrounding code-snippits in various RFCs that are indented to be used by the author, but the IETF stamps it with a less-usable license). -- "In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find." -- Terry Pratchett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]