[sword-devel] Licensing audit of SWORD for Fedora - sharing results with upstream

[Aaron Rainbolt]

Good morning/evening, and thanks for your time.

Recently SWORD was removed from Fedora 39 because of a bug relating to 
the python bindings (it's still using distutils rather than setuptools, 
which needed to be fixed, but the maintainer didn't fix it in time). I'm 
attempting to get SWORD back into Fedora by fixing the issue, but as the 
package was already retired, I'm preparing to reintroduce it as if it 
were being added for the first time. For the sake of making things go 
smoothly, I did a full licensing audit on the SWORD source code to 
ensure that all licenses were compliant with Fedora's requirements.

Some of the results of this audit were less-than-ideal, so I thought I 
would share the results with you so that you can take any measures you 
deem appropriate. I'm in the process of resolving these issues in Fedora.

* There are several files under sword-1.9.0/cmake that have unclear 
licenses (referring to "the BSD license" but without specifying which 
version, and telling the user to look at a file that doesn't exist for 
the license details). I *believe* these files are licensed under 
BSD-3-Clause, as I found the original source for all but one of them, 
however I could not find the original source for 
sword-1.9.0/cmake/FindXZ.cmake.

* The gSOAP bindings contain a file, 
sword-1.9.0/bindings/gsoap/include/stdsoap.h, which has no license and 
an "All rights reserved" notice.

* The Objective-C bindings have a similar problem - the following files 
under sword-1.9.0/bindings/objc all have no license and an "All rights 
reserved" notice:
    - ObjCSword.h
    - src/Notifications.h (yes I realize this file consists entirely of 
comments but this is still worrying)
    - src/SwordBibleBook.h
    - src/SwordBibleBook.m
    - src/SwordBibleChapter.h
    - src/SwordBibleChapter.m
    - src/SwordBibleTextEntry.h
    - src/SwordBibleTextEntry.m
    - src/SwordInstallSource.h
    - src/SwordInstallManager.h
    - src/SwordInstallManager.mm
    - src/SwordInstallSource.mm
    - src/SwordKey.h
    - src/SwordKey.m
    - src/SwordListKey.h
    - src/SwordListKey.mm
    - src/SwordLocaleManager.h
    - src/SwordLocaleManager.mm
    - src/SwordModuleIndex.h
    - src/SwordModuleIndex.m
    - src/SwordModuleTextEntry.h
    - src/SwordModuleTextEntry.m
    - src/SwordTreeEntry.h
    - src/SwordTreeEntry.m
    - src/SwordVerseKey.h
    - src/SwordVerseKey.mm
    - src/SwordVerseManager.h
    - src/SwordVerseManager.m
    - src/VerseEnumerator.h
    - src/VerseEnumerator.m
    - src/services/Configuration.h
    - src/services/Configuration.m
    - src/services/iOSConfiguration.h
    - src/services/iOSConfiguration.m
    - src/services/OSXConfiguration.h
    - src/services/OSXConfiguration.m
    - SWORD/SWORD/SWORD.h
    - SWORD/SWORD/SWORD.m
    - test/SwordListKeyTest.h
    - test/SwordListKeyTest.m
    - test/SwordModuleLongRunTest.h
    - test/SwordModuleLongRunTest.mm
    - test/SwordModuleTest.h
    - test/SwordModuleTest.m

* Two files under sword-1.9.0/src/utilfuns/win32 are under non-free 
licenses - they prohibit the sale of media containing those files for 
anything greater than the cost of distribution.

* The files sword-1.9.0/include/ftpparse.h and 
sword-1.9.0/src/utilfuns/ftpparse.c are under informal non-free licenses 
prohibiting commercial use unless the copyright owner is informed of 
what program uses the files. This code appears to be critical to SWORD's 
functionality (as FTP is used for module downloading), so I have 
attempted to contact the author and ask that ftpparse be relicensed to 
0BSD (which should be compatible with the licenses in SWORD).

In addition to the above, I discovered some pre-built binary files 
floating around:
    - sword-1.9.0/bindings/Android/SWORD/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar
    - sword-1.9.0/utilities/diatheke/pqa/Diatheke.pqa

While these aren't strictly a problem, they do have to be removed in 
Fedora. You might consider removing them from your SVN repo if possible 
and not too inconvenient.

I hope this message finds you all doing well! God bless, and thanks for 
all the work you've put into the SWORD Project!