Comment 6 for bug 12300

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:55:26 -0800
From: Fyodor <email address hidden>
To: astronut <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#292419: nmap: NMap possibly violates The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 05:11:48PM -0500, astronut wrote:
>
> The DFSG #5 states that "The license must not discriminate against any
> person or group of persons."
> Although nmap is liscenced under the GPL, it specifically forbids the
> SCO Group from distributing nmap.

That is not discrimination against any specific person or group-- the
GPL states (section 4 and 5) that companies must accept the GPL in
order to redistribute GPL'd software such as Nmap. Since SCO refuses
to accept the GPL terms, they have no right to redistribute Nmap.
This clarification in the changelog is not meant to modify the Nmap
license, but only to provide a concrete example of how we interpret
the GPL. SCO has no right to redistribute Nmap unless they accept its
license terms. Accordingly, I believe that they have ceased
distribution of Nmap. This exact issue has been hashed over by legal
minds much better than me in the Slashdot and Groklaw articles on the
topic.

Cheers,
Fyodor