Re: 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.

According to Adam Richter of Yggdrasil, Pavel Curtis released his work in
pcurses into the public domain. Up until that point I included his copyright
notice and a copyright notice to cover my own work. Thomas was not involved
with ncurses at the time and is not privy what happened before he did. It is
kinda late for him to question events. All of a sudden people are coming
out the woodwork claiming that ncurses is not free because they were not aware
of the copyright! The main purpose of the copyright is to prevent others from
taking ncurses, modifying it, and then releasing it as their own work.
I believe QNX include a modified copy of ncurses, but nobody is complaining
becuase they are not misrepresenting it as their own work.

Zeyd
Received on Wed Jun 04 1997 - 21:03:35 EDT