Bug#1036751: RFS: mini-httpd/1.30-4 [ITA] -- Small HTTP server
Hello again Nicholas,
I hope this mail finds you well.
> > remember the original NCSA httpd licence. P.S. It feels like
> > archaeology to find missing documentation for something from the > > dawn of
Eureka !
I present the original NCSA httpd license in its purest form after some software archeology:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060830015540/http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs-1.5/Copyright.html
(NCSA HTTPd Development Team / httpd@ncsa.uiuc.edu / Last Modified 08-01-95)
====================== LICENSE START ===========================
NCSA HTTPd Server
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
605 E. Springfield, Champaign IL 61820
httpd@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Copyright (C) 1995, Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
NCSA HTTPd software, both binary and source (hereafter, Software) is copyrighted by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (UI), and ownership remains with the UI.
The UI grants you (hereafter, Licensee) a license to use the Software for academic, research and internal business purposes only, without a fee. Licensee may distribute the binary and source code (if released) to third parties provided that the copyright notice and this statement appears on all copies and that no charge is associated with such copies.
Licensee may make derivative works. However, if Licensee distributes any derivative work based on or derived from the Software, then Licensee will (1) notify NCSA regarding its distributing of the derivative work, and (2) clearly notify users that such derivative work is a modified version and not the original NCSA HTTPd Server software distributed by the UI by including a statement such as the following:
"Portions developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
Any Licensee wishing to make commercial use of the Software should contact the UI, c/o NCSA, to negotiate an appropriate license for such commercial use. Commercial use includes (1) integration of all or part of the source code into a product for sale or license by or on behalf of Licensee to third parties, or (2) distribution of the binary code or source code to third parties that need it to utilize a commercial product sold or licensed by or on behalf of Licensee.
Any commercial company wishing to use the software as their commercial World Wide Web server and are not redistributing the software need not commercially license the software but can use it free of charge.
UI MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY. THE UI SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES SUFFERED BY THE USERS OF THIS SOFTWARE.
By using or copying this Software, Licensee agrees to abide by the copyright law and all other applicable laws of the U.S. including, but not limited to, export control laws, and the terms of this license. UI shall have the right to terminate this license immediately by written notice upon Licensee's breach of, or non-compliance with, any of its terms. Licensee may be held legally responsible for any copyright infringement that is caused or encouraged by Licensee's failure to abide by the terms of this license.
====================== LICENSE END =============================
Should we include a mention of this under debian/copyright stating
something along the lines of 'parts of mini_httpd.c under NCSA HTTPD
and include a copy of the license somewhere?
As far as I could dig, this is the license which should be attributed in our case. This is the 1.15 htttpd license, and with 99.9999% certainty, this was the chunk of code still found in mini_httpd.c. The logic is, NCSA httpd had, historically, two licenses (chronologically): one open and one proprietary. mini_httpd is a fork of the open one, that we can be sure of. I think there is little reason to involve debian-legal at this point.
What's your opinion here?
Kind regards,
Alexandru
------- Original Message -------
On Monday, June 12th, 2023 at 9:27 PM, Alexandru Mihail <alexandru_mihail@protonmail.ch> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> > I hope that the forests aren't burning, wherever you are.
> >
> > Take care,
>
>
> Oh damn, I really hope you and your family are going to be safe if you're facing wildfires near you..
> Here in Eastern Europe it's not really that much of an issue, thankfully.
>
> > remember the original NCSA httpd licence. P.S. It feels like
> > archaeology to find missing documentation for something from the dawn of
> > the Web! Also, it's a mystery to me what license the original httpd
> > was.
>
> It's pretty much a mistery to me too, seems like the original "License" if you could call it that is nothing more than:
> "
> Copyright (C) 2022 by Jef Poskanzer jef@mail.acme.com.
>
> All rights reserved.
>
> You may use this software however you like as long as you keep my name on it and don't sue me.
> "
> This is the current license (Author:So what does the legalese mean? This is a modified version of the BSD license). I'll try to dig a bit more about original source code license, if any other than the above was ever present :)
> Yeah, archeology indeed, I've had the same issue,believe it or not, when porting a certain version of a vintage telnet library from the 80s on modern hardware. Fun times, indeed
>
> Stay safe and good luck !
> Alexandru
>
>
> ------- Original Message -------
> On Monday, June 12th, 2023 at 9:01 PM, Nicholas D Steeves nsteeves@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hello Alexandru,
> >
> > Alexandru Mihail alexandru_mihail@protonmail.ch writes:
> >
> > > Hello Nicholas,
> > >
> > > > Sorry, my mistake. I meant to write "debian/copyright". One or more
> > > > entries in the copyright file conflicts with upstream evidence.
> > >
> > > No problem, I think I found what you were referring to and corrected our copyright, upstream is right. I documented the changes in the changelog.
> >
> > Aha, yes, that's 1/2 of what I was referring to :) The other half are
> > those copyright years that predate the 1999 claimed in our copyright
> > file.
> >
> > I also found what looks like a new issue: Those files that Rob McCool
> > authored as part of NCSA httpd that are part of mini-httpd, what
> > license are they? Attribution would be required if they were MIT/Expat,
> > BSD, or similar. This issue might also affect apache2's copyright file,
> > if anything remains of NCSA in Apache. Httpd predates the "NCSA"
> > license, by the way. If you can't find anything about it, then consider
> > contacting the debian-legal mailing list, because someone there might
> > remember the original NCSA httpd licence. P.S. It feels like
> > archaeology to find missing documentation for something from the dawn of
> > the Web! Also, it's a mystery to me what license the original httpd
> > was.
> >
> > > > > > Would you please push your work to your personal Salsa namespace (fork
> > > > > > relationship optional), and provide the link to the repo?
> > >
> > > https://salsa.debian.org/alexandru_mihail/mini-httpd
> > > Forked from master of:
> > > https://salsa.debian.org/debian/mini-httpd
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > > > speaking these patch fixups aren't release critical, and you can ignore
> > > > them if you'd like.
> > > > I will fix them, it's fine :)
> >
> > Thank you :)
> >
> > > Also, I uploaded again to mentors last night.
> > > Thanks and farewell,
> >
> > You're welcome. We're in the last round of review, by the way, and I
> > think it will be ready to upload with the next update.
> >
> > I hope that the forests aren't burning, wherever you are.
> >
> > Take care,
> > Nicholas
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