Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Usefulness of checklicenses.py
From: Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:16:37 -0400
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Jeff Morriss
<jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 09/16/13 19:58, Evan Huus wrote:
>>
>> I did a bit of work on this, and there are now 31 files remaining.
>>
>> Some of them (see my recent email on unlicensed tools) appear to be
>> just oversights that will involve tracking down and emailing the
>> original author. Others just have a header that is
>> non-standard/malformed and can be easily fixed.
>>
>> Some of them are more complicated:
>> - packet-vj.c appears to be illegal for us to use, it seems to include
>> All Rights Reserved code from Qualcomm.
>
>
> I don't know about All Rights Reserved stuff but the license that follows
> appears to be a 4-clause BSD license (the 4th clause being the "obnoxious
> advertising clause" which I was once told is incompatible.
>
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

It's not clear whether the BSD license covers the Qualcomm claim or
only the subsequent "Regents of the University of California" claim.
Either way we have a problem. [1] makes it clear that 4-clause BSD is
not compatible with GPL.

Are there objections to removing this dissector from trunk and the
maintained branches (1.8 and 1.10)? We obviously want to avoid
removing arbitrary functionality, but in this case I'm not sure we
have a choice. If somebody wants to decode this protocol, they'll have
to provide a dissector under a license we can use.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD

>> - packet-ieee80211-radiotap-iter.c is only available under GPL2 (as
>> opposed to GPL2+, like the rest of Wireshark) so I'm not sure if it is
>> compatible or not.
>> - epan/reedsolomon.[ch] appears to be only under the *original* GPL,
>> so I have no idea.
>>
>> (I am not a lawyer.)
>>
>> I am tempted to add the remaining list to the "ignore" set, just so we
>> start getting emails when new files fail license-check, however I'm
>> not sure if we'd ever get around to them in that situation...
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
>
> I'd say push to finish fixing up what we have...
>
>
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