Hello, Gently pinging in regard to the NCSA license situation Best, Alexandru
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 10:54, Alexandru Mihail <[alexandru_mih...@protonmail.ch](mailto:On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 10:54, Alexandru Mihail <<a href=)> wrote: > 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 / ht...@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 > ht...@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_mih...@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 j...@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 nstee...@gmail.com >> wrote: >> >> >> >> > Hello Alexandru, >> > >> > Alexandru Mihail alexandru_mih...@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
