Re: [xml] Question on licensing of libxml2

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

Jeffrey,

On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 15:34 -0800, Jeffrey G Douglas wrote:
> Hi -- 
>
> I know that the libxml2 project is licensed under MIT. However, there
> are a small handful of files that appear to be using variants of the
> MIT license and I was wondering if there was a reason for that.
> Specifically the files are trio.c, trio.h, triop.h, hash.c, list.c,
> triodef.h, trionan.c and trionan.h. These files contain different
> copyright statements and all the following license:
>
> * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for
> any
> * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the
> above
> * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
> *
> * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
> IMPLIED
> * WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
> * MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE AUTHORS
> AND
> * CONTRIBUTORS ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY IN ANY CONCEIVABLE MANNER.
>
> which looks to be a slightly reworded, abbreviated version of the MIT
> license. Is there any particular reason these files have this specific
> license? I just want to be certain that these files are not exceptions
> to the MIT licensing the rest of the project falls under.

The Trio project (http://daniel.haxx.se/projects/trio/ ; see also,
http://www.sourceforge.net/ctrio) is a third-party portability library
that is designed to be dropped into other applications such as is done
in libxml2. The license on Trio is specified as "MIT-like" on the first
page mentioned above. It is, in fact, more liberal than the MIT license
and does not prohibit using it in projects with different (or even more
restrictive) licenses.

Of course, insert all of the usual disclaimers here about me not being a
lawyer, etc. But the intention of the authors seems pretty clear.

Malcolm