Bug#624310: closed by Mike Hommey <mh at glandium.org> (Re: Bug#624310: [libnss3-1d] Out of date copyright file)

[Bastien ROUCARIES]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Mike Hommey <mh at glandium.org> wrote:
>> > The NSS code is under 3 licenses, not only the GPL...
>>
>> No because you include 4 bsd it is illegal to license under GPL. Will
>> send mail to legal.
>
> The DBM source code in nss is not licensed under GPL, but 4-clause BSD.
> The NSS source is not licensed under GPL, but under MPL/GPL/LGPL. The
> resulting binaries are licensed under whatever license is compatible,
> which would probably be LGPL/MPL (though I'm not entirely sure for MPL).
> That doesn't change the fact that the source is still MPL/GPL/LGPL
> (except for dbm and a few other things), and that as such, you can use
> some parts of nss in e.g.  GPL projects.
>
> I've always thought that the copyright file in binary packages
> containing information about the copyright of the source was not the
> best thing to do. We have here a specific case where it is confusing at
> best. Not illegal.

Yes but we could avoid this pitfall if we update the dbm file in order
to be compatible with gpl. They are already released as a 3 BSD...

Please improve this situation

bastien


> Mike
>