Re: [pkcs11] Groups - PKCS #11 V2.30 header files uploaded

[Wan-Teh Chang <wtc@google.com>]

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Tim Hudson <tjh@cryptsoft.com> wrote:
>
> On 30/05/2013 11:00 AM, Wan-Teh Chang wrote:
>>  This license is believed to be incompatible with the GPL.
>
> To be more complete in the statement - some people claim that it might be
> incompatible with the GPL but no one has actually demonstrated how or why
> this is actually the case and there has been no actual legal view point from
> anyone who is a lawyer in the open source community.

Thank you for the reply.

On your reply, I looked into this issue. I compared the license in the PKCS #11
header files with the original BSD license, in particular its
advertising clause.

Although the first two two clauses in the RSA license are similar to the BSD
advertising clause in that they say "all material mentioning ...", their
requirements are different. The clauses in the RSA license prescribe a
proper way to identify the software or derivative work. However, I can see
the second clause regarding derivative work may be considered as
burdensome.

> And NSS includes the original header files with (and I quote) exactly the
> same license text (from pkcs11t.h):
>
[... snipped...]
>
> So if you feel certain that this is incompatible with the GPL then you'll
> find that all NSS (and NSPR) derived code is also incompatible - a
> conclusion you'll find is not something that many would agree with.

(Note: NSPR doesn't use the PKCS #11 header files.)

The PKCS #11 header files in NSS are based on an old version that
Netscape got additional rights to, rather than the current version, because
of this concern. Perhaps the concern is unfounded, but it has caused
extra work for some open source projects.

I can only say that using a commonly-used, well-understood open-source
license such as the Revised BSD license will save a lot of headaches.

Wan-Teh Chang