COPYING -- Describes the terms under which Nmap is distributed.
IMPORTANT NMAP LICENSE TERMS
The Nmap Security Scanner is (C) 1996-2019 Insecure.Com LLC ("The Nmap
Project"). Nmap is also a registered trademark of the Nmap Project.
This program is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; Version 2 ("GPL"), BUT ONLY WITH ALL OF THE
CLARIFICATIONS AND EXCEPTIONS DESCRIBED HEREIN. This guarantees your
right to use, modify, and redistribute this software under certain
conditions. If you wish to embed Nmap technology into proprietary
software, we sell alternative licenses (contact sales@nmap.com).
Dozens of software vendors already license Nmap technology such as
host discovery, port scanning, OS detection, version detection, and
the Nmap Scripting Engine.
Note that the GPL places important restrictions on "derivative works",
yet it does not provide a detailed definition of that term. To avoid
misunderstandings, we interpret that term as broadly as copyright law
allows. For example, we consider an application to constitute a
derivative work for the purpose of this license if it does any of the
following with any software or content covered by this license ("Covered Software"):
o Integrates source code from Covered Software.
o Reads or includes copyrighted data files, such as Nmap's nmap-os-db
or nmap-service-probes.
o Is designed specifically to execute Covered Software and parse the
results (as opposed to typical shell or execution-menu apps, which will
execute anything you tell them to).
o Includes Covered Software in a proprietary executable installer. The
installers produced by InstallShield are an example of this. Including
Nmap with other software in compressed or archival form does not
trigger this provision, provided appropriate open source decompression
or de-archiving software is widely available for no charge. For the
purposes of this license, an installer is considered to include Covered
Software even if it actually retrieves a copy of Covered Software from
another source during runtime (such as by downloading it from the
Internet).
o Links (statically or dynamically) to a library which does any of the
above.
o Executes a helper program, module, or script to do any of the above.
This list is not exclusive, but is meant to clarify our interpretation
of derived works with some common examples. Other people may interpret
the plain GPL differently, so we consider this a special exception to
the GPL that we apply to Covered Software. Works which meet any of
these conditions must conform to all of the terms of this license,
particularly including the GPL Section 3 requirements of providing
source code and allowing free redistribution of the work as a whole.
As another special exception to the GPL terms, the Nmap Project grants
permission to link the code of this program with any version of the
OpenSSL library which is distributed under a license identical to that
listed in the included docs/licenses/OpenSSL.txt file, and distribute
linked combinations including the two.
The Nmap Project has permission to redistribute Npcap, a packet
capturing driver and library for the Microsoft Windows platform.
Npcap is a separate work with it's own license rather than this Nmap
license. Since the Npcap license does not permit redistribution
without special permission, our Nmap Windows binary packages which
contain Npcap may not be redistributed without special permission.
Any redistribution of Covered Software, including any derived works,
must obey and carry forward all of the terms of this license, including
obeying all GPL rules and restrictions. For example, source code of
the whole work must be provided and free redistribution must be
allowed. All GPL references to "this License", are to be treated as
including the terms and conditions of this license text as well.
Because this license imposes special exceptions to the GPL, Covered
Work may not be combined (even as part of a larger work) with plain GPL
software. The terms, conditions, and exceptions of this license must
be included as well. This license is incompatible with some other open
source licenses as well. In some cases we can relicense portions of
Nmap or grant special permissions to use it in other open source
software. Please contact fyodor@nmap.org with any such requests.
Similarly, we don't incorporate incompatible open source software into
Covered Software without special permission from the copyright holders.
If you have any questions about the licensing restrictions on using
Nmap in other works, we are happy to help. As mentioned above, we also
offer an alternative license to integrate Nmap into proprietary
applications and appliances. These contracts have been sold to dozens
of software vendors, and generally include a perpetual license as well
as providing support and updates. They also fund the continued
development of Nmap. Please email sales@nmap.com for further
information.
If you have received a written license agreement or contract for
Covered Software stating terms other than these, you may choose to use
and redistribute Covered Software under those terms instead of these.
Source is provided to this software because we believe users have a
right to know exactly what a program is going to do before they run it.
This also allows you to audit the software for security holes.
Source code also allows you to port Nmap to new platforms, fix bugs,
and add new features. You are highly encouraged to send your changes
to the dev@nmap.org mailing list for possible incorporation into the
main distribution. By sending these changes to Fyodor or one of the
Insecure.Org development mailing lists, or checking them into the Nmap
source code repository, it is understood (unless you specify
otherwise) that you are offering the Nmap Project the unlimited,
non-exclusive right to reuse, modify, and relicense the code. Nmap
will always be available Open Source, but this is important because
the inability to relicense code has caused devastating problems for
other Free Software projects (such as KDE and NASM). We also
occasionally relicense the code to third parties as discussed above.
If you wish to specify special license conditions of your
contributions, just say so when you send them.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the Nmap
license file for more details (it's in a COPYING file included with
Nmap, and also available from https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/COPYING)