What an interesting (and long) history of how software with mixed licensing is brought together. Copyright is complicated in software, when your contribution might be 15 lines that's really really important - or not.
Although I care about open-source licenses and about ncurses, I couldn't get interested in OP because the author failed to explain why anyone should care about the long string of facts. Why did the author write it? Was one of the reasons to publicize misbehavior by one of his 'dramatis personae'? I can't tell.
Ncurses is a part of the GNU Project. It is one of the few GNU files not distributed under the GNU GPL or LGPL; it is distributed under a permissive free software licence, similar to the MIT License.[8] This is due to the agreement made with the Free Software Foundation at the time the developers assigned their copyright.
When the agreement was made to pass on the rights to the FSF, there was a clause that stated:
The Foundation promises that all distribution of the Package, or of any work
"based on the Package", that takes place under the control of the Foundation
or its agents or assignees, shall be on terms that explicitly and
perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms
apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies
of the work to anyone on the same terms.
According to the maintainer Thomas E. Dickey, this precludes relicensing to the GPL in any version, since it would place restrictions on the programs that will be able to link to the libraries.
They don't say it very clearly, but my interpretation of the document is that the author feels that the development of ncurses is misattributed/plagerised and wishes to use that as a basis for challenging the license. To what end, I have no idea.
According to the copyright on the document, the author started writing it about 15 years after the major events took place (and it is now 20 years later). My question is not so much why they wrote this, but why they waited 15 years to write this.
Probably because describing those facts is now a matter of historical research rather than a political statement. The future of the ncurses project is now guaranteed, there is nothing to risk (nor to gain) from reopening such old wounds looking for historical truth.
Note also that the copyright notice at the top of the page seems to imply this text was originally published in 2011 and then updated during the following 4 years.
I think it makes for an interesting forensic history honestly. Even with the authors perhaps somewhat biased account, its not as if anyone involved came out smelling totally like roses.
