Sun RPC code to be relicensed
Sun RPC code to be relicensed
Here's a
weblog entry by Simon Phipps describing the difficulties involved in
changing the licensing of really old software - and the Sun RPC code in
particular. This code has been the subject
of some worry for years now, since its license is not truly free. At
the end of Simon's posting, he announces: "On Saturday I was able to
tell Europe's Free Software developers that the licenses on the RPC code
are no longer a barrier to Free software - we'll change the license to
Sun's copyrights in the RPC code to a standard 3-clause BSD license,
allowing inheritance of that licensing by both Debian and Fedora. I'm
delighted to have been able to fix this problem, which arose not because of
failure but because of the success of software freedom over many years and
because of Sun's early commitment to it.
"