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samba-mirror/VFS-License-clarification.txt
Bradley M. Kuhn 80ff5a37c7 VFS-License-clarification: minor improvements aligning w/ GPLv3 text
The phrase "derived work" and word "derived" don't appear in GPLv3;
instead, GPLv3 uses the phrases "modified version" and "based on" to
implement the strong copyleft clause.  Herein, align the VFS
statement with the phrases as they appear in the GPLv3 since Samba's
license is GPLv3-or-later.

Included are also a few other very minor wording changes as suggested
by legal counsel who is experienced with presenting these sorts of
licensing statements to company lawyers and suggests these changes
will comfort that constituency.

Finally, update both occurrences of the statement in the codebase in
two different files.

Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>
Reviewed-by: Jim McDonough <jmcd@samba.org>
Reviewed-by: Karolin Seeger <kseeger@samba.org>
Reviewed-by: Andrew Bartlett <abartlet@samba.org>
Reviewed-by: Jeremy Allison <jra@samba.org>
2020-11-04 21:29:40 +00:00

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A clarification of our GNU GPL License enforcement boundary within the Samba
Virtual File System (VFS) layer.
Samba is licensed under the GNU GPL. All code committed to the Samba
project or that creates a "modified version" or software "based on" Samba must
be either licensed under the GNU GPL or a compatible license.
Samba has several plug-in interfaces where external code may be called
from Samba GNU GPL licensed code. The most important of these is the
Samba VFS layer.
Samba VFS modules are intimately connected by header files and API
definitions to the part of the Samba code that provides file services,
and as such, code that implements a plug-in Samba VFS module must be
licensed under the GNU GPL or a compatible license.
However, Samba VFS modules may themselves call third-party external
libraries that are not part of the Samba project and are externally
developed and maintained.
As long as these third-party external libraries do not use any of the
Samba internal structure, APIs or interface definitions created by the
Samba project (to the extent that they would be considered subject to the GNU
GPL), then the Samba Team will not consider such third-party external
libraries called from Samba VFS modules as "based on" and/or creating a
"modified version" of the Samba code for the purposes of GNU GPL.
Accordingly, we do not require such libraries be licensed under the GNU GPL
or a GNU GPL compatible license.