Jeremy C. Reed said:

>On Thu, 31 May 2001, Frank van der Linden wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 11:51:05AM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>> > /usr/src/lib/libc/rpc/DISCLAIMER
>> > Users may copy or modify Sun RPC without charge, but are not authorized to
>> > license or distribute it to anyone else except as part of a product or
>> > program developed by the user.
>> 
>> The Sun RPC code has been in NetBSD (and FreeBSD and OpenBSD and I
>> believe in various Linux distributions) for quite a while now.
>> Nobody has ever seen this clause as a problem, and I do not think
>> it is. We are distributing it as part of a product; NetBSD.
>
>My particular concern is with taking a code snippet from the Sun RPC code
>and distributing it with the entire DISCLAIMER license. The definition of
>the word "product" is vague. Is an uncompilable code snippet a "program"
>or a "product"?

This particular bit of Sun RPC source code has been around forever.

It has been used in, at least:

Xenix
SCO UNIX
UNIX SVR2
UNIX SVR3
UNIX SVR3
Dynix
Dynix/ptx
CRDS UNOS
ESIX
and many other derivatives of sysv and bsd.

It was to Sun's advantage to "give away" this code
as it lead to interoperability.

-- 
Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com