Licensing of libpcap

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

One of the unpleasant legacies of the old BSD with advertising license
is the libpcap situation. Libpcap is a rather useful networking library
that quite a few other applications wish to use, but due to the GPL
incompatibility of that license, there are many concerns about enabling
libpcap related functionality in GPL/LGPL licensed code.

>From time to time, I revisit the libpcap codebase to see if the
situation has improved, and I wanted to document those efforts to
eliminate duplicate work across multiple distributions. Also, it never
hurts to show that Fedora Legal does more than simply rant about
licensing. ;)

~spot

The summary is as follows:
*************************
In libpcap 1.0.0, there are only 5 source files (out of 107) which
retain the poisonous "BSD with advertising" license, but unfortunately,
I have been unable to locate the copyright holders (or the correct
individuals at the copyright holder institutions) to request
relicensing.

It would be a huge help if anyone is able to put me in contact with the
individuals responsible for software licensing at:
* North Dakota State University
* Texas A&M University

Also, we we would need relicensing permission from:

* Yen Yen Lim (formerly a graduate student at North Dakota State
University)

I have not been able to find a current working email address for this
individual. Any and all assistance is greatly appreciated.

Here is the full file audit for libpcap 1.0.0:
*************************
The following code files are Copyright "The Regents of the University of
California", who have universally dropped the advertising clause (see:
ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change ).
Accordingly, they can be considered to be under 3-clause BSD:

arcnet.h
bpf/net/bpf_filter.c
bpf_dump.c
bpf_filter.c
bpf_image.c
etherent.c
ethertype.h
fad-getad.c
fad-gifc.c
fad-glifc.c
fad-null.c
filtertest.c
gencode.c
grammar.y
inet.c
lbl/os-solaris2.h
lbl/os-osf4.h
lbl/os-aix4.h
lbl/os-sunos4.h
lbl/os-hpux11.h
lbl/os-ultrix4.h
lbl/os-osf5.h
llc.h
nametoaddr.c
net/bpf_filter.c
optimize.c
pcap/pcap.h
pcap/sll.h
pcap/namedb.h
pcap/bpf.h
pcap/vlan.h
pcap-bpf.c
pcap-bpf.h
pcap.c
pcap-dlpi.c
pcap.h
pcap-int.h
pcap-libdlpi.c
pcap-namedb.h
pcap-nit.c
pcap-null.c
pcap-pf.c
pcap-snit.c
pcap-snoop.c
savefile.c
scanner.l
Win32/Src/getnetbynm.c
Win32/Src/getservent.c
Win32/Src/inet_net.c
Win32/Src/ffs.c
Win32/Src/getopt.c
Win32/Src/getnetent.c
Win32/Include/ip6_misc.h
Win32/Include/arpa/nameser.h (also has MIT licensed code, copyright DEC)
Win32/Include/net/paths.h
Win32/Include/net/netdb.h (also has MIT licensed code, copyright DEC)
Win32/Include/net/if.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Yen Yen Lim and North Dakota State
University". They are under the BSD with advertising clause. I have been
unable to locate Yen Yen Lim or an appropriate individual at North
Dakota State University to relicense these files:

atmuni31.h
gencode.h (most of this code is copyrighted by the Regents of
California, but not all)
sunatmpos.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Fulko Hew, SITA INC Canada, Inc",
under the three clause BSD license:

fad-sita.c
pcap-sita.c

*************************
The following files are copyright "NetGroup, Politecnico di Torino
(Italy)" and "CACE Technologies, Davis (California)", under the three
clause BSD license:

fad-win32.c
pcap-win32.c

*************************
The following files are copyright "NetGroup, Politecnico di Torino
(Italy)", under the three clause BSD license:

pcap-stdinc.h
Win32/Include/inetprivate.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Atsushi Onoe" and "Sam Leffler, Errno
Consulting", under either the three clause BSD license or the GPLv2:

ieee80211.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal
Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden)", under the three clause BSD
license:

missing/snprintf.c
Win32/Src/inet_pton.c
Win32/Src/inet_aton.c

*************************
The following files are copyright "Texas A&M University", under the BSD
with advertising clause. I have been unable to locate the appropriate
person at Texas A&M to relicense these files:

msdos/ndis2.c
msdos/ndis2.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Juniper Networks, Inc", under the
three clause BSD license:

nlpid.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Paolo Abeni (Italy)", under the three
clause BSD license:

pcap/usb.h
pcap/bluetooth.h
pcap-bt-linux.c
pcap-bt-linux.h
pcap-usb-linux.c
pcap-usb-linux.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "Torsten Landschoff
<torsten at debian.org>" and "Sebastian Krahmer
<krahmer at cs.uni-potsdam.de>", under the three clause BSD license:

pcap-linux.c

*************************
The following files are copyright "Carnegie Mellon", under the MIT
license:

ppp.h

*************************
The following files are copyright "WIDE Project", under the three clause
BSD license:

Win32/Src/getaddrinfo.c
Win32/Src/gai_strerror.c
Win32/Include/cdecl_ext.h
Win32/Include/bittypes.h
Win32/Include/sockstorage.h
Win32/Include/addrinfo.h