Bug#181493: Is the Sun RPC License DFSG-free?

[Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>]

Jakob Bohm <jbj@image.dk> writes (quoting the Sun RPC license):

>>                           but are not authorized to license or
>>           distribute it to anyone else except as part of a product or
>>           program developed by the user.
>
> I interpret that to mean that once the RPC code has been
> included in a larger program or product (say glibc), then the
> further use,distribution etc. of that program is only restricted
> by the license applied thereto by that user (in this case the
> LGPL applied thereto by the FSF).

If so, it is now possible to remove all the non-Sun-RPC bits from
glibc and distribute it, modify it, whatever, just as if it were under
the GPL.  This interpretation seems reasonable to me.  Given that Sun
is distributing glibc (under the GPL) it seems entirely reasonable to
interpret the license this way.

> Thus this only sticks if you seperate Sun RPC from glibc without
> putting it in another program (as you do if linking statically
> to glibc and only Sun RPC happens to be extracted from the .a
> file).

Here you seem to be contradicting the above, though, so I don't know
that I understand what you're saying.

> Thus for the RPC in glibc this restriction only applies if you
> manually extract Sun RPC from glibc and then try to distribute
> that all alone.  The right to do that is NOT required by DFSG 1.

Sure.  DFSG #1 doesn't require the ability to modify at all.  You may
be interested in #3, though, which this definitely *would* run afoul
of.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03