Bug#382175: Sun RPC libraries and other stories
On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 03:32:35PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> I'm here at ApacheCon with Simon Phipps and he said that Sun would be
> "delighted to help Debian resolve the RPC licensing problems". He wanted to
> note that the Free Software Definition did not exist at the time when Sun
> released to the community and they couldn't have predicted that it would
> violate the DFSG. Considering when it was released, its very open. He also
> noted that Sun hasn't pursued any legal action in all this time and that is
> a good indicator of their position on the whole thing.
And now it seems there's even more movement:
http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/old_code_and_old_licenses
“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 don't know exactly how it will happen (ie., if they will release a new
version, or issue some sort of formal statement like the BSDs once did that
you are allowed to ignore the previous license, or whatnot), but it's
certainly a good thing.
/* Steinar */
--
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
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