Re: [9fans] p9f licensing question (u9fs)

[Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it>]

Thanks David,

On Sun, 11 Apr 2021 20:55:33 +0200 David du Colombier wrote:

> > browsing the 9p.io's sources of plan9 I have noticed that u9fs have
> > a specific LICENSE file that is not MIT, while the page header says
> > "Distributed under the MIT License".
> > 
> > What's the actual license under which u9fs is distributed by the
> > Plan 9 Foundation?  
> 
> I suppose you are referring to this:
> 
> https://9p.io/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/unix/u9fs/LICENSE

Yes I am.
Sorry, I should have liked the page. 

> This is an old license that was used by Lucent to share software
> such as AWK, sam, u9fs, etc. as part of the Netlib collection.
> 
> This license was quite permissive and similar to the MIT license.

It looks so, but the wording is wierd (to my untrained eye):

```
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
purpose without fee is hereby granted, ...
```

the fact is that "without fee" comes before "is hereby granted", not
after, so that it looks as a condition to the distribution grant.

Indeed the canonical MIT license does not mention fees and the "free of
charges" is clearly referred to the permission:
https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

> You can ignore this file and consider u9fs is distributed under MIT.

Thanks!

But I think that to avoid future issues, the Plan 9 Foundation should
either remove the file or complement it with an explicit statement
about the new MIT licensing.


Giacomo

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