Hello, I'd like to get a debian-legal opinion on a potential issue with the kdeartwork package. debian-legal was CCed (http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00235.html) on an earlier discussion of the problem problem by Ben Burton, but didn't receive much feedback from this list. Thus I'm raising the issue again.
Ben Burton summarized the problem as follows: --- The problem here is a potential conflict between GPL and BSD-with-advertising-clause; see http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=109779477208076&w=2 for my original post. The question now is whether the advertising clause can be assumed to be rescinded. The UC Regents rescinded the advertising clause in 1999, but the vm_random.c used in kdeartwork appears to have been taken and modified from BSD before then. Certainly the change in 1999 applies to BSD software distributed since then, as evidenced by the fact that they removed the advertising clause from the corresponding source files. But it's not obvious to me that the change applies to software distributed beforehand (such as random.c from which vm_random.c was modified, in kdeartwork). There's also the trouble that the license they are modifying in your link is similar to but not the same as the license on vm_random.c (presumably because vm_random.c was from a much older BSD). And aside from this, there's the problem that vm_random.c was modified since it was taken from BSD, and the modifications are presumably also under the BSD-with-advertising-clause (since that's what vm_random's copyright notice says). In this case, my understanding is that UC Berkeley cannot change the licensing for someone else's modifications. --- KDE recently added this blurb to vm_random.c: > Please note that as of July 22, 1999, the licensees and distributors are > no longer required to include the above mentioned acknowledgment within > advertising materials. For full details see > ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change But it isn't clear to me that this really resolves the issue. Full text is at: http://webcvs.kde.org/kdeartwork/kscreensaver/kdesavers/vm_random.c?rev=1.2&view=markup [Please CC me on all replies] Thanks, Christopher Martin
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