[License-review] Process involved in adding the Sendmail license to the list of legacy licenses

[Pamela Chestek]

Hi Dan,

Sorry I didn't see this sooner, it landed in my spam folder.

Anyone can submit a license to the license-review list, it doesn't have 
to be the license author. Not having the license author means that all 
we can do is go/no-go, since the license can't be changed, but this also 
looks like a license that isn't likely to entertain any changes anyway.

Pam Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative

On 12/30/2022 11:14 PM, Dan Mahoney wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> My day job is a sysadmin with ISC, but I also have a part-time 
> maintainership (as Github: TheGushi) of the Trusted Domain Project’s 
> software including OpenDMARC and OpenDKIM.
>
> Several of these pieces of software are covered, at least in part, by 
> the sendmail license and even if we decided to release any new work 
> under a different license like the MPL, the sendmail license would 
> still apply to a great deal of our code, as it was developed by 
> Sendmail Inc.  (i.e. the sendmail license file would not go away).
>
> In an interesting tom-sawyer quest, getting the license recognized by 
> Github requires getting it included at ChooseALicence.com 
> <http://choosealicence.com/>, which in turn requires it to show up on 
> one of three sites (of which yours is one).  What would it take to 
> make that happen?  It DOES have an SPDX entry.
>
> This is an old license and while it’s not likely to be used for many 
> new projects (it’s not “in vogue”, and it has bits in the license that 
> apply specifically to the Sendmail corporation), there’s a great deal 
> of sendmail in a number of open source operating systems, so things 
> like Github *should* be aware of it, especially as Github becomes an 
> archive location for legacy code that had previously lived elsewhere.
>
> So my question here, before I go through the whole application process 
> is: do I have enough “standing” as a maintainer of code previously 
> licensed under this license to apply for it to be issued?  Or is that 
> a non-starter?
>
> I’m not interested in wasting anyone’s time, but couldn’t find an 
> obvious contact method on the licensing page, without submitting a 
> full application.  I apologize if this sidesteps the normal process.
>
> Looking at your proliferation page 
> (https://opensource.org/proliferation-report), I would guess that the 
> sendmail license is considered “non-reusable” — but it’s certainly not 
> retired in any sense.
>
> I have also reached out to the FSF with similar questions.
>
> Best (and happy new year)
>
> -Dan Mahoney
> ISC and Trusted Domain Project
>
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