Previously Vita Nuova made the Inferno® software available under its
`Vita Nuova Liberal Source Licence' of May 2003.  Because a proliferation
of licences for Open/Free software is increasingly seen as undesirable, and
because the Free Software Foundation found that licence incompatible with the GPL,
Vita Nuova now relicenses the software under a mixture of existing Free Software
licences.

Under Vita Nuova's `dual-licence' scheme, the Inferno® software is made
available on the following terms.  Files and directories in the distribution
contain NOTICE files that give (or refer to) the terms of several Free Software
licences, listed here in increasing order of liberality:
	- GNU General Public License (`GPL')
	- GNU Lesser General Public License (`LGPL')
	- Lucent Public Licence 1.02
	- a Vita Nuova `free for all' licence based on the so-called `MIT template'
The text of each licence can be found in lib/legal.

Some portions of the software are subject to GPL and LGPL.
Through their `copyleft' clauses impose some degree of reciprocity in terms of (for instance)
making changes and additions available in source form if you distribute software
that is subject to those licences, but only to the extent the licences require.

Other portions are subject to the Lucent Public or Vita Nuova `free for all' licence
and do not impose `copyleft' conditions.

For instance, the native and hosted kernels are `free for all', as are most of the
supporting libraries, but the virtual machine library and Limbo library modules are LGPL,
and the applications, including the Limbo compiler, are GPL.

The particular choices are intended to maximise the freedom to deploy the system
in proprietary settings, and preventing clashes with licence terms for related systems
such as Plan 9 (for kernel and library code), whilst protecting the investment in
Free Software made by Vita Nuova and other contributors.

If the terms referenced by the NOTICE files are NOT acceptable (or you just fancy
a quiet life without having to worry about them), THEN you can obtain
a more conventional Commercial Licence from Vita Nuova (support@vitanuova.com).