hostapd/wpa_supplicant licensing terms

[Jouni Malinen]

hostapd and wpa_supplicant (or well, all of hostap.git) are currently
distributed under two licensing alternatives: GPLv2 and modified BSD
license (the advertisement clause removed). In other words, anyone
distributing or modifying the source code or binaries can elect to use
either of those alternatives.

Having multiple options available is obviously making things somewhat
more complex and over the years, I've received number of queries on what
license terms can be used. Taken into account that the modified BSD
license is actually compatible with GPLv2 (and other GPL versions for
that matter), there are no major benefits from including the GPLv2
license alternative separately.

I'm now considering of selecting the modified BSD license alternative as
the only license option for future distribution of the hostap.git
repository and hostapd/wpa_supplicant release packages. I'm not planning
on changing the actual license terms of the existing BSD license
alternative, but just to use my right to elect one of the license
alternatives for future distribution of the software.

It should be noted that this does not add any additional restrictions on
the use or distribution of software from hostap.git in other projects.
Since the modified BSD license is compatible with GPL, projects that use
GPL can continue to use software from hostap.git similarly to how they
could use software that is licensed under any other GPL compatible
license. Projects that used the modified BSD license alternative would
not be affected since that option would continue to be available.

Having only a single license option available will make the licensing
terms clearer and will hopefully avoid most of the confusion that may
have been behind the questions I've received regarding licensing of
hostapd and wpa_supplicant.

If you have any concerns, comments, or questions on this, please feel
free to contact me either on this mailing list or via private email.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA