Question on MIT Kerberos Library licensing

[Eran Messeri]

On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 1:38 PM, Simo Sorce <simo at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2018-05-10 at 10:56 +0100, Eran Messeri wrote:
> > Dear Kerberos Developers,
> >
> > I'd like to use the MIT Kerberos library in an open-source Android
> > application I'm developing.
> > However, the people who reviewed the licenses had some
> concerns/questions.
> >
> > Who's a good person to bring up these issues with? Is there someone on
> the
> > development team that deals with licenses for contributed code in
> > particular?
> >
> > I'm happy to elaborate on the intended use - it's not confidential, and
> > pretty straightforward use of the Kerberos library.
>
> Eran,
> Maybe you can start by stating what License concerns were raised ?
>
> The MIT Kerberos library uses one of the most liberal Open Source
> licenses you can find, I am surprised if that's at issue, so I am
> curious to know what's the perceived problem.
>

The concerns were around the language related to the files contributed by
OpenVision.
In particular, the copyright and permission notice
<https://web.mit.edu/kerberos/krb5-1.12/doc/mitK5license.html> includes the
following:

"OpenVision retains all copyrights in the donated Source Code. OpenVision
also retains copyright to derivative works of the Source Code, whether
created by OpenVision or by a third party. The OpenVision copyright notice
must be preserved if derivative works are made based on the donated Source
Code."

The internal concern was around the potential broad applicability implied
by term "derivative works of the Source Code,  whether created by
OpenVision or by a third party.".


>
> Simo.
>
> --
> Simo Sorce
> Sr. Principal Software Engineer
> Red Hat, Inc
>
>