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[BUG] delete the uw dialect, or at least uw headers #274

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dilinger opened this issue Jan 19, 2023 · 1 comment
Open

[BUG] delete the uw dialect, or at least uw headers #274

dilinger opened this issue Jan 19, 2023 · 1 comment

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@dilinger
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dilinger commented Jan 19, 2023

Describe the bug

The UnixWare dialect contains headers without proper licensing. Specifically, the header files in lsof/dialects/uw/uw7/sys/fs/ contain headers with the comment "THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF THE SANTA CRUZ OPERATION INC."
The README in that directory has a 1998 message from Vic saying, "The header files in this subdirectory tree are Copyright (c) The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. They are reproduced here, either in their original or corrected forms with permission." However, it is not clear what "with permission" means in terms of licensing. I would hope that Vic got permission for it to be covered under the same license as the rest of lsof (the Purdue license), but it could also have meant "we give permission for this to be used in the lsof project, and only the lsof project" (which would be a problem for forks, distributions, etc). We don't know.

I suspect this has been ignored for a while because "with permission" was considered Good Enough, and also because the US legal system has precedent that APIs aren't copyrightable (Oracle v. Google). However, IP laws are complex and vary by country, and my understanding is that it's not exactly settled law even in the US. I'm not sure that it's worth it to continue carrying it at this point, and it's certainly not worth it to try and clear it up by attempting to understand exactly what permissions were granted. UnixWare at this point is really old. UW7 was released in 1998, UW stuff sold to Caldera in 2001, and the last UW update was made 5+ years ago. I don't think UW users are clamoring for newer versions of lsof.

I propose we simply delete the UW dialect, and ask UW users to use older versions of lsof.

Thoughts?

@jiegec
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jiegec commented Jan 20, 2023

@filbo

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