Question on MIT Kerberos Library licensing

[Simo Sorce]

On Thu, 2018-05-10 at 19:14 +0100, Eran Messeri wrote:
> 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.".

For this kind of doubts the only good person to ask would be a lawyer.
I can only say that MIT is distributed by many third parties and none
of them seem to be overly concerned with the wording of the OpenVision
grant.

Simo.

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