Nmap Copyright and Licensing
The Nmap Security Scanner is (C) 1996-2008 Insecure.Com LLC. Nmap is also a registered trademark of Insecure.Com LLC. 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 with the clarifications and exceptions described below. 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@insecure.com>
). Dozens of software vendors already license Nmap technology such as host discovery, port scanning, OS detection, and version detection.
Note that the GPL places important restrictions on
“derived works”, yet it does not provide a detailed
definition of that term. To avoid misunderstandings, we consider an
application to constitute a “derivative work” for the
purpose of this license if it does any of the following:
Integrates source code from Nmap
Reads or includes Nmap copyrighted data files, such as
nmap-os-db
or
nmap-service-probes
.
Executes Nmap and parses the results (as opposed to
typical shell or execution-menu apps, which simply display raw
Nmap output and so are not derivative works.)
Integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap into a proprietary
executable installer, such as those produced by
InstallShield.
Links to a library or executes a program that does any
of the above.
The term “Nmap” should be taken to also include any
portions or derived works of Nmap. This list is not exclusive, but is
just meant to clarify our interpretation of derived works with some
common examples. These restrictions only apply when you actually
redistribute Nmap. For example, nothing stops you from writing and
selling a proprietary front-end to Nmap. Just distribute it by
itself, and point people to http://nmap.org to download Nmap.
We don't consider these to be added restrictions on top of the
GPL, but just a clarification of how we interpret “derived
works” as it applies to our GPL-licensed Nmap product. This is
similar to the way Linus Torvalds has announced his interpretation of
how “derived works” applies to Linux kernel modules. Our
interpretation refers only to Nmap—we don't speak for any other GPL
products.
If you have any questions about the GPL licensing restrictions
on using Nmap in non-GPL works, we would be happy to help. As
mentioned above, we also offer alternative license to integrate Nmap
into proprietary applications and appliances. These contracts have
been sold to many security vendors, and generally include a perpetual
license as well as providing for priority support and updates as well
as helping to fund the continued development of Nmap
technology. Please email <sales@insecure.com>
for further
information.
As a special exception to the GPL terms, Insecure.Com LLC 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 COPYING.OpenSSL
file, and distribute linked
combinations including the two. You must obey the GNU GPL in all
respects for all of the code used other than OpenSSL. If you modify
this file, you may extend this exception to your version of the file,
but you are not obligated to do so.
If you received these files with a written license agreement or
contract stating terms other than the terms above, then that
alternative license agreement takes precedence over these
comments.
Creative Commons License for this Nmap Guide
This Nmap Reference Guide is (C) 2005 Insecure.Com LLC. It is
hereby placed under version 2.5 of the
Creative Commons Attribution License This allows you redistribute and modify
the work as you desire, as long as you credit the original source.
Alternatively, you may choose to treat this document as falling under
the same license as Nmap itself (discussed previously).
Source Code Availability and Community Contributions
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
(none have been found so far).
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 <fyodor@insecure.org>
for possible
incorporation into the main distribution. By sending these changes to
Fyodor or one of the Insecure.Org development mailing lists, it is
assumed that you are offering Fyodor and Insecure.Com LLC 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 GNU
General Public License v2.0 for more details at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html, or in the COPYING
file
included with Nmap.
It should also be noted that Nmap has occasionally been known to crash
poorly written applications, TCP/IP stacks, and even operating
systems. While this is extremely rare, it is important to keep in
mind. Nmap should never be run against mission
critical systems unless you are prepared to suffer
downtime. We acknowledge here that Nmap may crash your systems or
networks and we disclaim all liability for any damage or problems Nmap
could cause.
Because of the slight risk of crashes and because a few black
hats like to use Nmap for reconnaissance prior to attacking systems,
there are administrators who become upset and may complain when their
system is scanned. Thus, it is often advisable to request permission
before doing even a light scan of a network.
Nmap should never be installed with special privileges
(e.g. suid root) for security reasons.
This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation A
modified version of the Libpcap
portable packet capture library is distributed along with
nmap. The Windows version of Nmap utilized the Libpcap-derived WinPcap library instead. Regular
expression support is provided by the PCRE library, which is open source
software, written by Philip Hazel. Certain raw networking functions
use the Libdnet
networking library, which was written by Dug Song. A modified version
is distributed with Nmap. Nmap can optionally link with the OpenSSL cryptography toolkit for
SSL version detection support. The Nmap Scripting Engine uses an
embedded version of the Lua
programming language All of the third-party software
described in this paragraph is freely redistributable under BSD-style
software licenses.
US Export Control Classification
US Export Control: Insecure.Com LLC believes that Nmap falls
under US ECCN (export control classification number) 5D992. This
category is called “Information Security software not controlled
by 5D002”. The only restriction of this classification is AT
(anti-terrorism), which applies to almost all goods and denies export
to a handful of rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. Thus
exporting Nmap does not require any special license, permit, or other
governmental authorization.