[pkg-x2go-devel] Bug#784565: Bug#784565: nx-libs-lite: parts are derived from non-free code

Tue May 12 04:46:37 UTC 2015

Dear Kevin,

(I Cc: several people involved in this, also the X2Go development  
mailing list...)

[If you feel unconfortable with discussing the details / the impact of  
the below in public, feel free to answer to me directly first with  
questions and concerns, before answering to all people who are listed  
in Cc:.]

Someone from the Debian legal team recently brought up a license issue  
discovered in nx-libs 3.x series.

TL;DR; Suggested by Francesco Poli from the Debian legal team: """
(A) someone gets in touch with DXPC copyright owners and asks them
whether the re-licensing [in 2002] may be considered retroactive  
(applicable to
older versions of DXPC); in case the answer is negative, DXPC copyright
owners should be persuaded to make the re-licensing retroactive
"""

The person contacting you about the above question is me. Mike  
Gabriel, Debian Developer and one of the current upstream maintainers  
of nx-libs 3.x (previously also know as  "NX redistributed" for X2Go)  
[1].

This issue requires some time of reading from you and (hopefully) a  
public statement, that the original DXPC code can be considered as  
BSD-2-clause (the current license) also for released versions prior  
2002 when the ancient BSD license template [2] was still shipped with  
DXPC.

For a complete follow-up, please check Debian bug #784565 [3].

We are aware that NoMachine forked DXPC at some early stage around the  
year 2000 and wrote their own commercial product around it. Obviously,  
this fork happened before 2002 (i.e., before DXPC release 3.8.1), as  
libxcomp3 in NoMachine's NX ships the previously used BSD license  
template. I am not sure, if that fork was easy for you or actually a  
nuisance. I may only guess at this point. I'd be happy to know more  
(maybe not in this mail thread, though).

NoMachine has stopped publishing NXv3 updates a couple of years ago  
(2011 IIRC), now. The maintenance has been moved into the hands of the  
currently available FLOSS projects "X2Go", "Arctica Project" [NEW] and  
"TheQVD". Some of us are running a business model on top of that  
(consultancy, support contracts, feature development contracts), some  
of us spend a lot of their free time on improving / maintaining  
nx-libs (as we call NoMachine's NXv3 at the moment).

To outline the impact of my mail clearly: If you say that it was not  
legal by NoMachine to fork DXPC at the given time (before 2002), then  
all FLOSS remote desktop / remote application would be in real  
trouble, because then the core component of their software projects  
could not be considered as free (as in DFSG, Debian free software  
guidelines[4]) anymore. Also the code changes originally performed by  
NoMachine might have been illegal in the first place. All current  
maintenance activities and also planned future development on nx-libs  
would become questionable.

Thus, I hope you can chime in on this: Dear developers of nx-libs,  
please assume the BSD-2-license as retroactive and applicable to DXPC  
version earlier than 3.8.1. As the copyright holder, I agree with  
modifications of code bases that originate before the change to  
BSD-2-clause license got introduced in 3.8.1 of DXPC.

And... I will bring up that question later (but it is burning under my  
nails)... Be sure: The nx-libs maintainers would be happy to have the  
original DXPC author on the nx-libs developer team. But I will bring  
up that question later (when this very issue is settled). ;-)

Greets,
Mike

[1] https://github.com/ArcticaProject/nx-libs
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#Previous_license
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/784565
[4] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines

On  Mo 11 Mai 2015 21:36:59 CEST, Francesco Poli wrote:

> On Mon, 11 May 2015 09:26:36 +0000 Mike Gabriel wrote:
>
> [...]
>> As it seems, dxpc has been long ago relicensed to BSD-2-clause (for
>> v3.8.1 in/around 2002).
>
> This is great news, indeed!
>
>>
>> I have no exact clue, if NoMachine forked prior to that (if they quote
>> the old licensing terms, then probably they did).
>
> Yep, it's plausible...
>
>>
>> However, how do you see the situation considering that upstream
>> changed to BSD-2-clause a long time ago. What approach do you propose
>> for nx-libs-lite to get the issue fully fixed?
>
> If the fork has been performed before the DXPC re-licensing (as it's
> likely), I see two possible strategies:
>
>  (A) someone gets in touch with DXPC copyright owners and asks them
> whether the re-licensing may be considered retroactive (applicable to
> older versions of DXPC); in case the answer is negative, DXPC copyright
> owners should be persuaded to make the re-licensing retroactive
>
>  (B) nx-libs-lite upstream developers re-fork from scratch, basing the
> new code on a BSD-licensed version of DXPC (I suspect this may turn out
> to be somewhat painful...)
>
>
> Obviously, the optimal solution is (A). I hope it may work...
>
> Thanks for your time and for your prompt and kind replies.

-- 

DAS-NETZWERKTEAM
mike gabriel, herweg 7, 24357 fleckeby
fon: +49 (1520) 1976 148

GnuPG Key ID 0x25771B31
mail: mike.gabriel at das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de

freeBusy:
https://mail.das-netzwerkteam.de/freebusy/m.gabriel%40das-netzwerkteam.de.xfb
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: Digitale PGP-Signatur
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-x2go-devel/attachments/20150512/a50bc956/attachment-0001.sig>