Re: TAO & omniORB license clarification

[Ossama Othman <othman@cs.wustl.edu>]

Hi,

On 12 Apr, Henning Makholm wrote:
 > John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> writes:
 > > Ossama Othman quotes:
 > 
 > > > You may copy and extend functionality (but may not remove functionality)
 > > > of the Interface Definition Language CFE without charge, but you are not
 > > > authorized to license or distribute it to anyone else except as part of a
 > > > product or program developed by you or with the express written consent
 > > > of Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun").
 > 
 > > Non-free.
 > 
 > It can't even go into no-free, can it? One is only allowed to
 > distribute it as part of a program one has developed oneself. So
 > unless the Debian FTP archive maintainer wrote the program, it would
 > need a special permission from Sun to put it there.

Hmm, that's good question.  It would certainly appear that that is the
case, i.e. distribution can only be done by the software developer not
by some intermediate party such as Debian.  This is terrible. :(

Can someone please help clarify this?  I may have to pull TAO from
non-free and Debian entirely, if this is the case since TAO pretty much
has the same restrictions.  I guess it is time to bother Sun again.

Please CC me since I am not subscribed to this list.

Thanks,
-Ossama
______________________________________________________________________
Ossama Othman <othman@cs.wustl.edu>
58 60 1A E8 7A 66 F4 44  74 9F 3C D4 EF BF 35 88  1024/8A04D15D 1998/08/26