sbin/md5 license problem

Ben Mesander ben at timing.com
Tue Jun 21 19:48:09 GMT 2005


All,

  I have been researching the license found on sbin/md5/md5.c . This
file is the command-line wrapper for functionality found in libmd.

>From the source code:

/*
 *  Copyright (C) 1990-2, RSA Data Security, Inc. Created 1990. All
 *  rights reserved.
 *
 *  RSA Data Security, Inc. makes no representations concerning either
 *  the merchantability of this software or the suitability of this
 *  software for any particular purpose. It is provided "as is"
 *  without express or implied warranty of any kind.
 *
 *  These notices must be retained in any copies of any part of this
 *  documentation and/or software.
 */

This license does not seem to allow for redistribution or derivative
works. I would think this would be a problem for FreeBSD.

The CVS log for the initial commit to the FreeBSD vendor branch (can
be viewed via:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sbin/md5/md5.c ) says:

"Incorproate version of md5 placed into public domain by RSA."

But the license text in this commit is identical to the above, and
is clearly not public domain.

It appears that the OpenBSD project at one point completely re-wrote
the wrapper so as to have a BSD license (and make other improvements):

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/bin/md5/md5.c.diff?r1=1.9&r2=1.10

I have not yet located where NetBSD hid their md5 source on their
website.

Regards,
Ben


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