On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 03:56:56PM +0800, LI Daobing wrote: > I am the maintainer of qterm and I am checking the license issue in qterm. > > qterm is release under GPL-2+ as a whole, and the source files are > released under GPL-2+, LGPL-2.1+, BSD-2 and others. > > qterm/ssh/getput.h is released under following license[1]. And I don't > know whether it's OK to distribute it as GPL-2+, or whether it fulfill > DFSG, thanks. As Francesco wrote, this seems to be fine as far as the DFSG is concerned. About the GPL: > As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this > software can be used freely for any purpose. > Any derived versions of this software must be clearly marked as > such, This is fine, the GPL requires it itself, so that should not make it incompatible. > and if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol > description in the RFC file, it must be called by a name other > than "ssh" or "Secure Shell". This may be a problem. However, to me it seems this just clarifies how he thinks about the use of his trademarks. They're probably not registered, but they still have some protection (assuming he is the right person to claim them). If he wants to use these names as trademarks, AFAIK he is allowed to. Looking at it that way, this statement really gives two licenses: one for the software, which is almost a disclaimer of copyright, and one for the trademarks, which has restrictions. AFAIK the GPL doesn't have a problem with this (that is, if a company puts its trademarked logo in GPL'd software, the GPL doesn't force the company to license the trademark to anyone). However, IANAL and I'm not at all sure if this is a proper way to look at things. I'd appreciate input from the list on it. Thanks, Bas Ps: please CC me on replies. -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature