On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 02:31:09PM -0500, Karl Fogel wrote: > Johnny Solbu <[email protected]> writes: > >Hi. > >I tried maling FSFs licensing department, but the FSFs website says > >something to the effect that if they have answered the question on > >their webpage, the mail will be unanswered, and I have not received a > >reply. So I'm asuming it is answered on their website. However I > >cannot find the answer to this specific question, and Google is of no > >help. So I'm trying this list instead. > > > >I am packaging an old game I recently discovered, which is still in > >active development. > >The game (netrek-client-cow) have MIT or an MIT-like license (at least > >I think it's MIT), which have a "and without fee" clause. And I am > >unsure whether that this clause is compatible with Free Software or > >not. To someone like me, this looks like what we today call a no > >commercial clause. > >I have discovered that it most likely is what Fedora call MIT old > >style. (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:MIT#Old_Style) > > > >So my question is, is this a Free Software license? > > I believe the "without fee" here refers to payment to the original > licensor, and does not require that further redistribution be without > fee (though it certainly permits that). > > It's slightly different from the text of the current MIT license at > > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical > > I don't know if OSI ever considered the old-style MIT language. Does > anyone here know?
OSI approved a sort of template legacy license that it called "Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer" http://opensource.org/licenses/HPND which is at least similar to the license(s) being asked about here. What I find curious is the statement that the license "has been voluntarily deprecated by its author", as it is not clear that this even refers to a single license. Fedora (thanks to Tom Callaway) attempts to catalogue all the versions of the MIT/X11 license family that it encounters. I don't recall whether we ever encountered a license in this family that we considered non-FLOSS (I don't think so, though I think there may have been one or two close cases). - Richard > > -Karl > > >There is two license text files, one is possibly newer that the > >other. At least one of the licence files seems to be from 1986, and > >the other from 1989. > >The license text in full reads: > >== 1 == > >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. > >==== > >== 2 == > >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. No representations are made about the suitability of this > >software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or > >implied warranty. > >==== > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
