pcurses license

Following is the pcurses license (from curses.h). It only grants
redistribution without modification. Unless Zeyd and Eric received
permission from Pavel Curtis to release ncurses, it appears that ncurses
was (and I assume still is) in direct violation of the pcurses license,
concerning redistribution. Furthermore, the notice was removed from
ncurses between the 1.8.7 and 1.8.8 releases, according to Thomas, which
is also in direct violation of the pcurses license.

Does anyone have anything to say about this? It appears to me that the
existence of ncurses is in direct violation of the license on its parent,
pcurses. Also, even though ncurses is much different now than it was in
the beginning, it will always be a derivative work of pcurses, which means
we have to get Pavel's permission (ideally, copyright assignment) to
distribute ncurses. In my mind, this is an unacceptable state of affairs
for a library that the free software community is very dependent on.

/*********************************************************************
* COPYRIGHT NOTICE *
**********************************************************************
* This software is copyright (C) 1982 by Pavel Curtis *
* *
* Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute *
* this file by any means so long as no fee is charged *
* above a nominal handling fee and so long as this *
* notice is always included in the copies. *
* *
* Other rights are reserved except as explicitly granted *
* by written permission of the author. *
* Pavel Curtis *
* Computer Science Dept. *
* 405 Upson Hall *
* Cornell University *
* Ithaca, NY 14853 *
* *
* Ph- (607) 256-4934 *
* *
* Pavel.Cornell_at_Udel-Relay (ARPAnet) *
* decvax!cornell!pavel (UUCPnet) *
*********************************************************************/

Jason

Jason Evans: [MRC System Administrator]
e-mail: [jasone_at_mrc.uidaho.edu]
office phone: [(208) 885-7226]
home phone: [(208) 882-6745]
quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." - Thomas Edison]
Received on Wed Jun 04 1997 - 20:22:35 EDT