Re: Sun RPC libraries and other stories

[Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 05:07:07PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> > Assuming Sun is the sole copyright holder of that code, he could advise
> > their IP laywers/whoever to relicense the code; either to the glibc
> > license (LGPL-1.2 or later, currently), or perhaps the BSD license.  The
> > latter would probably be best for portmap as well, considering is is BSD
> > licensed.
> > 
> > If Sun does not want to relicense to BSD/LGPL this code due to their
> > corporate licensing strategy, but still want to see the code remain in
> > Debian's glibc/portmap, they should propose a compatible license they
> > like I'd say.
> 
> For Sun to make this happen we just have to help them line things up.
> On the one hand, similar code exists in Solaris but we don't want to
> go through the headache of trying to reintegrate that code into our
> stack. We need to wave a magic licensing wand over the particular code
> that we are using, in place. Since this code is from 1984 we have to
> go through some archeological processes to locate the people in Sun
> that are the duly designated authorities.

The code is copyrighted by Sun, not some particular employee, so AFAICT 
digging up who wrote it will not be necessary.

For portmap:

 - from_local.c:

 /*
  * Check if an address belongs to the local system. Adapted from:
  * 
  * pmap_svc.c 1.32 91/03/11 Copyright 1984,1990 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  * get_myaddress.c  2.1 88/07/29 4.0 RPCSRC.
  */

 - portmap.c

 /*
 @(#)portmap.c   2.3 88/08/11 4.0 RPCSRC
 static char sccsid[] = "@(#)portmap.c 1.32 87/08/06 Copyr 1984 Sun
 Micro";
 */

This is portmap-6.0, from http://neil.brown.name/portmap/


For glibc, it is basically everything in glibc/sunrpc, which got taken
from rpcsrc-4.0 according to the top-level LICENSING file:

"The Sun RPC support (from rpcsrc-4.0) is covered by the following
license: [...]"

The trunk code can be viewed at
http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/libc/sunrpc/?cvsroot=glibc but
it would be desirable if Sun would relicense the past versions as well,
as Lenny will ship with glibc-2.7.  The tarballs can be found at
ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/

> What we need to do for them is provide them a list of URLs to the
> elements we need re-licensed and the license we think would solve the
> most problems for us. Sun can then take that source and start tracking
> down who needs to authorize it.


Hope that help,

Michael