Subject: Re: Vendor-friendly SNMP daemon?
To: Ross Patterson <Ross.Patterson@CatchFS.Com>
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Thorbj=F6rn_Jemander?= <thorbjorn@jemander.net>
List: tech-embed
Date: 12/16/2003 11:47:17
Hi,

>Does anyone know of an SNMP daemon for NetBSD that allows commercial use?  An 
>open source implementation would be preferable, but something commercial with 
>reasonable royalties would be of interest as well.  Net-snmp is the obvious 
>answer, but it doesn't appear to be permitted as we sell the device we want 
>to run this on.  The CMU copyright clause says:

>	Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and its
>	documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
>	...

I think you are misunderstanding the phrase "without fee". It should be 
interpreted as
"one does not have to pay the originator the right to use, copy, modify 
etc",
not as "you cannot charge for this or derivative work".

There are several companies (among them one that I've worked for) that 
uses NET-SNMP in commerical
products. If the latter interpretation were to be correct, the license 
would not have been compatible with DFSG 
(http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines) or OSD
(http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php), and then would not
Debian or other free software projects wanted to distribute NET-SNMP.

/Thorbjörn Jemander