[Fedora-legal-list] License issue with mpich2

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 22:56 -0400, Deji Akingunola wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I've been trying to get mpich2 into Fedora for quite a long time now
> [1]. At this time all the technical issues blocking its inclusion
> seems to have been solved; however Jason Tibbitts did raise an issue
> with the licensing. mpich2 package doesn't contain any licensing text,
> but it ships with a copyright notice which include a 'GOVERNMENT
> LICENSE' and a 'DISCLAIMER' sections, and also simply stating
> 'Permission is hereby granted to use, reproduce, prepare derivative
> works, and
> to redistribute to others.'
> I've had the review ticket blocking FE-legal, but nothing is happening
> on that front yet. I hope FE-legal can look into this and make a
> decision, the upstream is really interested in having the package
> distributed as part of Fedora.
> Thank you.

Typical IANAL-speak, but the US Government is usually required to have a
license for itself, any other licensing notwithstanding, as a condition
of acceptance of paid work.  AFAIK, that license is additive, not
restrictive.  The license appears to be MIT-ish to me, but Spot can
probably vet this more easily than I.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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