[arch-dev-public] Inclusion of RAR

Ray Rashif schiv at archlinux.org
Mon Jan 3 12:40:54 EST 2011


On 4 January 2011 01:08, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> It was removed from the repos and replaced by 'unrar' a few years ago,
> as the license of 'rar' did not allow redistribution, while 'unrar' did.
> I don't know when this happened, but I do know there was mailing list
> discussion and tpowa was involved. That is all I remember.

Ahh, I knew there was a story behind this.

Anyway, it looks like it can now be redistributed:

5. The RAR/WinRAR unlicensed trial version may be freely distributed,
      with exceptions noted below, provided the distribution package is not
      modified in any way.

      a.  No person or company may distribute separate parts of the package
          with the exception of the UnRAR components, without written
          permission of the copyright owner.

      b.  The RAR/WinRAR unlicensed trial version may not be distributed
          inside of any other software package without written permission
          of the copyright owner.

      c.  Hacks/cracks, keys or key generators may not be included on the
          same distribution.

This still wasn't clear to me, so I sent an e-mail and got this:

"If you redistribute exactly the same set of files as in original
rarlinux-4.0.b3.tar.gz tar archive, then it is allowed even if you
changed the packaging format from tar.gz to format, which is more
suitable for your Linux distribution. So yes, your redistribution
approach is OK."

Anyway, in light of the history, I think it is best to skip extra this time.


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