Hi, Edd Barrett wrote on Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 02:13:52PM +0100: > From: pancake <[email protected]>
>> Debian packager has reported a bug in magic license. >> >> COPYRIGHT file contains the 4th clause bsd There is no COPYRIGHT file in the OpenBSD file(1) source directory. So, i'm not 100% sure what you are talking about. However, one of the source files used for composing the magic file, namely, src/usr.bin/file/magdir/os9 is indeed licenced under the four-clause BSD license. According to the Copyright statement in that file, the author is "Copyright (c) 1996 Ignatios Souvatzis [...] This product includes software developed by Ignatios Souvatzis for the NetBSD project." Maybe that is what you are talking about? >> which is gpl incompatible. That's no problem at all, for software in the OpenBSD base system, it is not required to be GPL compatible. > The thing is that *.c files include the 3clause bsd license > which is ok. > > Can i remove the 4th clause from the copyright file? NO, YOU CANNOT. You can never remove conditions from license files. Only the author can release her/his intellectual property under a different license, unless the existing license explicitely allows sublicensing, which the BSD license does not allow. So, Pancake, you can try to talk to Ignatios Souvatzis to rescind the fourth clause in his license. Many authors are willing to do that nowdays, after UCB did the same more than a decade ago. If the author is unwilling to release the file under a license that pleases you, or doesn't answer, or is unreachable, just don't use the file. Deleting one of more than 200 magic files won't render file(1) useless. > This should be reported to openbsd too as long as its inconsistent > and can be problematic. For OpenBSD, this is not really a problem. Until about 2003, large parts of the OpenBSD tree were distributed under the 4-clause BSD license anyway, and there are still parts that are licensed that way. The third and fourth clauses are a bit annoying, so don't use them for licensing your own files, but having files licensed that way it is no real problem in a BSD distribution. > A port I am maintaining uses our file(1) implementation. A debian > dev who was packaging this thinks he has spotted a license bug. I fail to see any bug here. Do you see a bug, Edd? If so, where exactly? Yours, Ingo
