Bug#1025650: ftp.debian.org: Nmap Public Source License Version 0.94 - Is it DFSG-compliant?

Mechtilde <[email protected]> Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:05:57 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.general
Message-ID	<7d0dfb46-bd48-47ee-a26a-2b9be9e76ac8__4534.99224256433$1784218174$gmane$org@mechtilde.de>

Hello,

I start to review.

So I looked through the links and read the first lines from
https://nmap.org/npsl/npsl-annotated.html

The first line says:" The NPSL itself is rather terse, ...".
And in the third line: "These annotations are not part of the license 
itself, a legal document, or legal advice."

Where can we find the original license text, the legal document. Nothing 
else is legally binding

On Behalf of the DFSG-Team

Mechtilde

Am 16.07.26 um 15:54 schrieb Sven Geuer:
> Hello DFSG Team,
> 
> as the FTP Team is not involved in DFSG compliance anymore, may I ask
> you to have a look at the issue brought up below and help resolving it?
> 
> Regards,
> Sven
> 
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2022 21:59:18 +0000 Samuel Henrique <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Package: ftp.debian.org
>> X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
>> Severity: serious
>> Justification: Policy 2.1
>>
>> Hello ftp-master team,
>>
>> I'm opening this bug to request an official position of the team on
>> whether the NPSL license meets the DFSG requirements or not.
>>
>> There's some divergence of opinions on the matter and I think the only
>> next step is to get an evaluation from the ftp-master team. FWIW I'm
>> currently on the opinion that the license should be considered free
>> due to its similarity with GPL2 (and copyleft licenses in general) but
>> Hilko (the other maintainer) is on the side of considering it non-free
>> due to a contamination issue. Sorry if I'm oversimplifying here,
>> Hilko. Both mine and Hilko's points are better written in the
>> references below.
>>
>> Related discussions:
>> Thread on d-legal:
>> https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2022/09/msg00000.html
>> Upstream discussion:
>> https://github.com/nmap/nmap/issues/2199
>>
>> Please consider that upstream is usually quite responsive in that
>> Github issue and so we can make follow-up questions.
>>
>> We need to make a decision to understand if the current nmap we are
>> shipping (in all our supported releases[0]) is DFSG-free or not. This
>> decision should be done ideally before the freeze so we can take any
>> required actions.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> [0] At least one issue that I've seen raised is present in all
>> versions of nmap we ship (since the first iteration of NPSL), which
>> would mean even our package in oldstable and stable is non-free.
>>
>> -- 
>> Samuel Henrique <samueloph>
>>
>>
> 

-- 
Mechtilde Stehmann
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