Re: License issues with metasploit-framework

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* James Westby:

> ;        This file is part of the Metasploit Exploit Framework
> ;        and is subject to the same licenses and copyrights as
> ;        the rest of this package.

This should be fine; a lot of Perl modules use similar language.

> There is a zlib implementation with the following license

This is the original zlib license.

>         b. The Software is distributed without any charge, beyond (at
> Your option) the reasonable costs of data transfer or storage media. You
> may -not- (i) sell, lease, rent, or otherwise charge for the Software,
> (ii) include any component or subset of the Software in any commercial
> application or product, or (iii) sell, lease, rent, or otherwise charge
> for any appliance (i.e., hardware, peripheral, personal digital device,
> or other electronic product) that includes any component or subset of
> the Software. 

This doesn't look DFSG-free to me.  Most of the other, rather
innovative clauses, have problems as well.  If the click-through part
must be enforced by redistributors, it's not even suitable for the
non-free section.

I can understand why upstream is doing this, but I don't think the
result is still free software.