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Comment by callahad | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe the TrueCrypt license allows this kind of redistribution, does it?

Then again, with anonymous developers and unknown jurisdiction, it may be moot.

It says derived programs shouldn't be called "TrueCrypt" and shouldn't be ascribed to the original publishers, which honestly seem like pretty mild requirements.

https://github.com/warewolf/truecrypt/blob/33c0b8457051796fa...

The big issue was the clause that didn't protect those who forked from copyright infringement or being sued and the devs said that was intentional. Although, i doubt they'd really want to come out and make themselves public to pursue that.

So they are right off on the wrong foot, with that domain name.

I belive any TrueCrypt fork should require contributions to be dual licensed under TrueCrypt's original license and BSD. In time, the project can shed original files and re-implement them under BSD or any other GPL compatible license.

So far there isn't any derived code. The truecrypt.ch domain seems a reasonable place for people to regroup. If/when a new release comes out, the community can think about a new name and register a new domain.

The Truecrypt licenses also say that it cannot be sold, which makes it non-free and non open source. The OSI even said, "it is not at all appropriate for [TrueCrypt] to describe itself as 'open source.'"

http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/truecrypt-or...

From a practical view the original authors were anonymous, would they really shed that to sue somebody forking their code against the license? Probably not.

They are redistributing the original unmodified source, so it shouldn't go against the 'derivation' requirement..

Looking at the license simplifications part of TrueCrypt 7.2 [1], it may be allowed.

[1] https://github.com/warewolf/truecrypt/compare/master...7.2#d...

Upon skimming, it looks like it still retains some clauses like: "The name of Your Product (or of Your modified version of This Product) must not contain the name TrueCrypt [...] nor any other names confusingly similar to the name TrueCrypt" and "All graphics contained in This Product (logos, icons, etc.) must be removed from Your Product (or from Your modified version of This Product) and from any associated materials."

...but that actually doesn't seem all that insurmountable. Hm...

TrueCrypt 7.1a - the one with the actual functionality - wasn't released under this license. It was released under the earlier one. And I don't think it allows for this version or later ala GPL. I'm not sure of this, though.

Well could you not simply take 7.2 and patch it back to something resembling 7.1a, thus keeping both the license and the functionality?

Only if you write those patches without referring to the 7.1a source, which would be difficult since thousands of lines have been removed.

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