[Savannah-hackers] Resolving nmh licensing/copyright issues

[Earl Hood]

Savannah Hackers,

Recently, a request to host the CVS repository for nmh, the successor
to MH, a message handling package has been submit to you.  However,
there appears to be a hang-up on licensing and/or copyright that is
preventing approval, and there has been a lack of recent correspondance
on the matter.  I believe a Ken Hornstein has been involved with the
initial correspondance.

Would you please state explicitly what problems you have with nmh,
either in its license or copyright?  From what is being relayed to
the nmh-workers list, it appears to be a licensing issue.  So, what
follows is a copy of the COPYRIGHT notice that comes with the nmh
distribution:

--- snip ---
Copyright (c) 2000, the authors of nmh
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
  list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this
  list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or
  other materials provided with the distribution.
  
* Neither the name "the authors of nmh", nor variations such as "The nmh
  Developers", nor the names of the individual contributors may be used to
  endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior
  written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ITS AUTHORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO
EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OF NMH BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR
BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY
OF SUCH DAMAGE.

--- snip ---


Ignoring the "authors of nmh" part, is the rest of the text compatible
with FSF's view on what comprises a free software license?

Now, I have been informed that the "authors of nmh" part is a source
of concern.  What exactly is the concern, and why is it a concern if
this is a non-GNU project?

If the "authors of nmh" is something that can prohibit nmh from
being hosted on savannah, what needs to be changed to prevent the
prohibition?  Since nmh has been touched by several people, would
mentioning a reference to a AUTHORS document list the main authors
and a reference to the ChangeLog be sufficient? 

Thanks for time on this matter,

--ewh

P.S. I hope you guys realize that all project summary pages are displaying
the following error:

"Parse error: parse error in /subversions/sourceforge/src/savannah/www/projects 
on line 47"

-- 
Earl Hood
address@hidden
<URL:http://www.earlhood.com/>