[Fedora-legal-list] Nmap License

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 06:58:09PM -0500, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Nmap license is listed as a combination of GPL, LGPL and BSD in the Fedora
> package however the COPYING file has very specific interpretations and
> exceptions to GPL.  Is this still considered plain GPL?
> 
> https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/COPYING

No, it shouldn't be seen as plain GPL. I'd say this is a free software
license but is sufficiently more restrictive than conventional
interpretations of GPLv2 to the point of being GPL-incompatible, and
indeed the authors seem to acknowledge this. It should have a distinct
license tag.

- RF