[Adium-devl] Bonjour networking (It's that time again, folks!)

[Andreas Monitzer]

On Feb 17, 2007, at 09:21, Geoff Foster wrote:

> Probably not possible to put Apple's Bonjour implementation into
> libgaim because of licensing. Bonjour implementation is Apache 2
> licensed, libgaim GPLv2, incompatible. If I'm wrong on this then that
> is great news, but if I'm right then it sucks, or a workaround would
> need to be found.

 From Apple's web page:
> The mDNSResponder daemon source code is licensed under the terms of  
> the Apache License, Version 2.0. To accommodate compatibility with  
> the widest possible range of client source code licenses, the DNS- 
> SD shared library source code is licensed under the "Three-Clause  
> BSD License".

Since libgaim wouldn't link to the daemon, but to the shared library,  
the "Three-Clause BSD License" comes into effect. Since I didn't know  
what they meant by that (original BSD, which is GPL-incompatible or  
modified BSD, which is compatible), I looked at the source  
distribution. It says:

> To accommodate license compatibility with the widest possible range
> of client code licenses, the shared library code, which is linked
> at runtime into the same address space as the client using it, is
> licensed under the terms of the "Three-Clause BSD License".
>
> The Linux Name Service Switch code, contributed by National ICT
> Australia Ltd (NICTA) is licensed under the terms of the NICTA Public
> Software Licence (which is substantially similar to the "Three-Clause
> BSD License", with some additional language pertaining to  
> Australian law).

This is the NICTA Public Software License:

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The page http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html explains the  
difference. Since that license doesn't contain the advertising  
clause, the library is under the modified BSD license, and thus,  
compatible with GPL and libgaim.
(of course IANAL, but I think that additional clause shouldn't cause  
any problems)

andy