krb5 license export clause
Hi debian-legal,
While helping with a license audit of the largely LGPL'ed project ROOT
(message CC'ed to project contacts), I happened to notice that the
license for source package krb5, from which the ROOT source uses some
code, contains the following clauses:
-----
Export of this software from the United States of America may require
a specific license from the United States Government. It is the
responsibility of any person or organization contemplating export to
obtain such a license before exporting.
WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to [do standard MIT license things]
is hereby granted, provided that [standard MIT license requirements are
obeyed.]
-----
(The full license is attached.)
I know there have been numerous discussions about export restrictions as
they relate to DFSG-freeness before, but I was surprisingly unable to
find one about this particular license.
The first paragraph excerpted above, if it were by itself, would seem
harmless to me because it is a legal no-op: it is just an advisory
notice, not a requirement of the license.
What puzzles me are the words "WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT". Is that phrase
sufficient to cause US export restrictions to be incorporated into the
license? My understanding is that if so, it would not be DFSG-free, and
also not GPL- or LGPL-compatible. If "WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT" does
*not* cause US export restrictions to be incorporated, then what (if
anything) is the semantic content of those three words?
Thanks in advance,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
Copyright Notice and Legal Administrivia
----------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 1985-2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
All rights reserved.
Export of this software from the United States of America may require
a specific license from the United States Government. It is the
responsibility of any person or organization contemplating export to
obtain such a license before exporting.
WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to use, copy, modify, and
distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and
without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that
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