On Thu, 2001-10-04 at 12:27, Bill Manning wrote:
I don't think that the USC licence will allow a GNU type licence to be applied. And while it would be prudent to chat w/ USC legal, I expect that "use" of the software may not include the aspect of a client that generates aa query that is sent over the Internet. The software itself is the recipeitn of that query and the folks running that server may be said to use it. RIRs seem to make a fine home, since they are not commercial entities... Right?
RIRs are a fine home for the server(s), yes (that's one of the reasons why the RIPE members contribute to the RIPE NCC after all), but the RAToolset/IRRToolset software includes tools such as roe(1), the Route Object Editor, and aoe(1), the AS Object Editor. These are clients that contact a IRR server. The IRR server is (usually) running at a RIR, but the clients are not. And yet, the client software has that Naughty Copyright Notice attached to ALL of its source files (and manual page). Like I said, most (techie) people don't give a hoot, but legal departments at largish outfits can seriously halt Progress(tm). Although RIPE and the RIPE NCC are non-profit organisations, most of the members are most definitely out to make a (euro-)buck. It's only proper that if these tools are to be hosted/provided/maintained by the RIPE NCC, that the restrictive license is removed. Replacing it with a RIPE/RIPE NCC copyright may make non-RIPE members nervous, so I still think a GNU-like license is the safest and fairest option. Cheers, Steven