Summary

[KFV] DeltaH - mroute.h licence

Type

Bug

Category

Other

Raised by

crap0101

Date opened

2009–06–05

Description

the file mroute.h located in the /include/linux folder of the kernel has a doubtful copyright notice\\ (point 4. and probably point 6.)

ml: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-users/2009-06/msg00006.html
and: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-dev/2009-10/msg00046.html
the file itself report not reference, only

/*

 *	Based on the MROUTING 3.5 defines primarily to keep
 *	source compatibility with BSD.
 *
 *	See the mrouted code for the original history.
 *
 *      Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) data structures included
 *      Carlos Picoto (cap@di.fc.ul.pt)
 *
 */

I’ve download the source package from ftp://ftp.research.att.com/pub/fenner/mrouted/
the version 3.5 (and 3.6) is here http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/mrouted/historical/
according to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense
this licence have the same problem of the eCos Public License, version 1.1, so it’s non-free

Also, the file mroute.h doesn’t report how line of code were taken from which files! searching in the mrouted3.5 source package the folder ‘mrouted’ contains many files that fall under that non free licence, someone else has not licence notice and the follows file were licenced under others licences (many aren’t free):

mapper.c → individual licence by Xerox (free)
mrinfo.c → individual licence by Xerox (non-free) it doesn’t permit use, copy ecc., apart for resarch and evaluetion purposes
mtrace.8 → licenced by the University of Southern California (non-free) doesn’t permit commercial use
mtrace.c → (non-free) like mtrace.8
rsrr.c → (non-free) like mtrace.8 and mtrace.c
rsrr.h → (non-free) like rsrr.c
the rest of files in the mrouted folder are (someone have not licence notice) released under the term described in the LICENSE’ file but this is not a free licence, so these files aren’t free too. - crap0101 - 05 Jun 09

Status

Closed

Importance

3

Target Release

none

Resolution

mroute.h only contains definitions, mrouted contains only a negligible portion of those definitions. mrouted probably got its definitions from BSD include files. It’s safe to say that mroute.h was reconstructed to be compatible with mrouted and not just copied. samgee2

Date closed

2009–10–26

Comments

Here is the problem clause:

4. LICENSEE may create derivative versions of the Program. LICENSEE hereby grants STANFORD a royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, distribute and sublicense any such derivative works. At the time LICENSEE provides a copy of a derivative version of the Program to a third party, LICENSEE shall provide STANFORD with one copy of the source code of the derivative version at no charge to STANFORD.

And according to the README-*

IP Multicast Extensions for BSD-Derived Unix Systems Multicast Routing Daemon

This might be un-fun to fix.kgoetz

For knowledge: http://www.fsfla.org/pipermail/linux-libre/2009-June/000654.html crap0101 30 Jul 09

After a comparison between mroute.h and the source mrouted tarball i think the code in the former only mimic the mrouted structures and definitions for source compatibility purpose (like stated in the first comment); indeed, i haven’t found blocks of code copied from the latter. crap0101 26 Oct 09

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