There are bindings for ncurses in a variety of programming languages, including Ada,[4] Python,[5] Gambas,[6] Ruby,[7] PHP,[8] JavaScript,[9] Perl,[10] Object REXX (ooRexx)[11] and Rust.

However, due to AT&T's policy regarding the distribution of source code, the improved curses library was not widely adopted in the BSD community.

[13] Around 1982, Pavel Curtis started work on a freeware clone of the Bell Labs curses, named pcurses, which was maintained by various people through 1986.

Subsequent work, through version 1.8.8 (M1995), was driven by Eric S. Raymond, who added the form and menu libraries written by Juergen Pfeifer.

According to the maintainer Thomas E. Dickey, this precludes relicensing to the GPL in any version, since it would place restrictions on the programs that will be able to link to the libraries.