Re-homing of RAToolSet to RIPE NCC

On Thu, 2001-10-04 at 12:27, Bill Manning wrote:
> 	I don't think that the USC licence will allow a GNU type 
> 	licence to be applied. And while it would be prudent to 
> 	chat w/ USC legal, I expect that "use" of the software 
> 	may not include the aspect of a client that generates aa
> 	query that is sent over the Internet. The software itself
> 	is the recipeitn of that query and the folks running that
> 	server may be said to use it.  RIRs seem to make a fine
> 	home, since they are not commercial entities... Right?

RIRs are a fine home for the server(s), yes (that's one of the reasons
why the RIPE members contribute to the RIPE NCC after all), but the
RAToolset/IRRToolset software includes tools such as roe(1), the Route
Object Editor, and aoe(1), the AS Object Editor.  These are clients that
contact a IRR server.  The IRR server is (usually) running at a RIR, but
the clients are not.  And yet, the client software has that Naughty
Copyright Notice attached to ALL of its source files (and manual page). 
Like I said, most (techie) people don't give a hoot, but legal
departments at largish outfits can seriously halt Progress(tm). Although
RIPE and the RIPE NCC are non-profit organisations, most of the members
are most definitely out to make a (euro-)buck. It's only proper that if
these tools are to be hosted/provided/maintained by the RIPE NCC, that
the restrictive license is removed. Replacing it with a RIPE/RIPE NCC
copyright may make non-RIPE members nervous, so I still think a GNU-like
license is the safest and fairest option.

Cheers,
Steven