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 (Re: Bug#624310: [libnss3-1d] Out of date copyright file)

[Mike Hommey]

> > 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.

Mike