On Mon, Jul 04, 2016 at 12:23:00PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
I am also mindful of the interpretive principle I used to
occasionally
espouse, essentially that we should scrutinize especially closely the
conditions of any bespoke copyleft license (or standard copyleft
license apparently supplemented by bespoke informal restrictive
interpretive statements), where the business model of the licensor is
some variant of 'proprietary relicensing', as (it seems) here.
So, overall I'm inclined to say this license (which is not equivalent
to the Sleepycat license) is free but should be treated as
incompatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3,
I have a couple of additional concerns, though, regarding "informal
restrictive interpretive statements":
In the FAQ for Cryptlib, it is said that "All commercial users must
obtain a commercial license" [1], and separately [2] it is said that
"Any software you create with this code may not be merely a set or
subset of cryptlib, with or without minor added functionality or a
different interface. In particular you can’t distribute cryptlib (or
any modified form of it) as your own encryption or security
product. This is to stop users adding their own wrappers and selling
it as “their” software product."
which I confess I don't quite understand if it is not a blanket
prohibition on creating derivative works or a prohibition on
rebranding of derivative works.
On the same page the author says "Any and all large-scale commercial
use of cryptlib requires a license." which I now take to mean "a
license other than my bespoke version of the Sleepycat license".
So, my revised view is that this license is sufficiently concerning
that it should be treated as nonfree pending some adequate
clarifications from the author. (If I were to reach a different
conclusion I think I'd then be acting inconsistently with my past
views on such things as the notorious iText license.)
[
1]http://www.cryptlib.com/security-faq
[
2]http://www.cryptlib.com/security-software/licensing