License Notification (GPL V2)

The text that follows is the GNU General Public License, Version 2 (GPL V2) and governs your use, modification and/or distribution of SNORT.

Section 9 of the GPL V2 acknowledges that the Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GPL V2 from time to time. Section 9further states that a licensee of a program subject to the GPL V2 could be free to use any such revised and/or new versions under two different scenarios:

1. "Failure to Specify." Section 9 of the GPL V2 allows a licensee of a program governed by an unspecified version of the General Public License to choose any version of the General Public License ever published by the Free Software Foundation to govern his or her use of such program.

This provision is not applicable to your use of SNORT because we have expressly stated in a number of instances that any third party's use, modification or distribution of SNORT is governed by GPL V2.

2. "Any Later Version." At the end of the terms and condition of the GPL V2 is a section called "How to Apply these Terms to Your New Program," which provides guidance to a developer on how to apply the GPL V2 to a third party's use, modification and/or distribution of his/her program. Among other things, this guidance suggests that the developer attach certain notices to the program. Of particular importance is the following notice:

"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

Thus if a developer follows strictly the guidance provided by the Free Software Foundation, Section 9 of the GPL V2 provides the licensee the option to either use, modify or distribute the program under GPL V2 or under any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

SNORT is an open source project that is governed exclusively by the GPL V2 and any third party desiring to use, modify or distribute SNORT must do so by strictly following the terms and conditions of GPL V2. Anyone using, modifying or distributing SNORT does not have the option to choose to use, modify or distribute SNORT under any revised or new version of the GPL, including without limitation, the GNU General Public License Version 3.

For ease of reference, the comparable notice that is used with SNORT (contained in the 'README' file) is as follows:

"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. You may not use, modify or distribute this program under any other version of the GNU General Public License."

If you have any questions about this statement, please feel free to email snort-info@snort.org.