Licenses

[rfht]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Hi,

As brought up in Issue #630 a while ago, I have a working port for OpenBSD. To share this with other users via the ports system, I'd like to clarify licensing.

The one that I stumbled over is the license in the PortTalk code.

Is PortTalk so important that the restrictive license is justified?

I have looked through the head of all 4,000-something files and didn't see anything else that looked like a restrictive license, but with so many files, I'd just like to know if there may be other code that's known to be similarly copyrighted/licensed.

Describe the solution you'd like
Clarify use of restrictively licensed code or (ideally) find a way to replace or make it optional to use.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Alternatively, a port e.g. on OpenBSD might require manual building and could not be distributed in binary form if this conflicts with some of the licenses used.

Additional context
Sorry for the delay between my original contact in Issue #630 .
If I can be of any help in sorting out the license situation, I'd be glad to help! Thanks for this otherwise awesome project!

[joncampbell123]

I don't consider the PortTalk code important, nor do I think it would even work on OpenBSD.

I did a quick lookover of the source tree sometime back to try and document all licenses and sources of the various parts of the code, which is listed in the README file under "Origins and crediting of source code".

[rfht]

Thanks for merging. I've reached out to Neko Project II upstream to find out about the pertaining license. Also looking into FreeDOS again. Would suggest keeping this issue open for a bit since I'm still actively trying to add more info.

[yksoft1]

By the way, DOS4GW.EXE, DOSIDLE.COM and such built-in binary blobs would have licensing problems.

[joncampbell123]

Good point.

DOSIDLE.COM could be rewritten from scratch if I can figure out what it does.

DOS4GW.EXE could be eliminated because most games that need it provide their own.

[yksoft1]

Good point.

DOSIDLE.COM could be rewritten from scratch if I can figure out what it does.

DOS4GW.EXE could be eliminated because most games that need it provide their own.

Are such blobs there since DOSBox Daum?

[joncampbell123]

That was inherited from Daum's branch, yes.

[CoelacanthusHex]

Hi, I have a similar issue:
I maintain the package of this project in archlinuxcn. Recently, Arch Linux enforced using the SPDX identifier via RFC16¹. It differs from GPL-2.0-only and GPL-2.0-or-later. So I need to know which one was used in this project. And need to know all other licenses used by this project.
Thank You!

Footnotes

1. https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/blob/master/rfcs/0016-spdx-license-identifiers.rst ↩