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Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:35:35 -0400
From: Rich Rumble <richrumble@...il.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: GPL license is not free at all

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Alexander Cherepanov <cherepan@...me.ru> wrote:
> No, it's not GPL sucking our energy, it's non-free unrar. *If* we are an
> open source project then there is no place for this unrar in our project
> no matter which license other files are under.
Well unrar, appears to be it's own license... albeit a short one. It
lacks all the "legalese" and all the CYA typically found in
licenses... but to me it does seem free to use/distribute the more
I've read it. While RAR is not-free and proprietary, and unrar is
"stripped" out of the rar code (according to the readme), however it
appears to be it's own entity and have it's own separate license from
RAR.
To me http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIsCompatible tells
me that they can be used together. RH and others not providing unrar
may be due to longstanding or outdated licensing issues with previous
unrar lib's??. I don't see why unrar is non-free, even when it's
counterpart most certainly is not free. There are ways forward rather
than debating back and forth, I just don't seem to get the fuss on
this one after I've read the unrar license a few more times. I'll go
read the GPLv2 and get a closer look at that. To comply with the unrar
license you have to put paragraph 2 into you code or license
statements, which has been done, and to comply with the GPL you need
to provide source and attribution, which we do as well. That's an over
simplification but it seems to fit. Unless after re-reading the GPLv2
I find anything different this is where my .02 cents ends.
-rich

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