Martin Quinson wrote: > A new version of Scilab (a matlab-like program) is out, and they claim this > version to be free. (for now, it is in the non-free part of debian) > > http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scilab/license.txt > > I would like to have your input on the DFSG complience of this > licence.
[Oups. Forgot to send to the list.] It falls short on a few points. Here's what I emailed them last week, but I haven't heard back from them. Peter -cut- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Peter S Galbraith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Making Scilab free (as in speech) software Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:54:16 -0500 From: Peter S Galbraith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dr Scilab wrote: > you wrote> Hello, > you wrote> > you wrote> I'm wondering what the rational behind the redistribution > you wrote> restrictions for scilab. Free Software is more popular now than > you wrote> ever, and I'm sure your needs could be met using a free license > you wrote> (e.g. http://www.debian.org/intro/free) > you wrote> > > Dear Peter, > > In our mind, Scilab has always been free software. that is > why the source code is included in the package. Our license, for > historical reasons, does not reflect this but this is going to change in the > future release. > > Dr Scilab Hello, We had the above exchange in September 2000. I was glad to see version 2.6 appear on your servers, and downloaded to see what the license was. I'm happy that you made the license `freer', but I'm sorry that it still falls short of Debian's Free Software Guidelines. (You might be surprised to hear this in fact!) Perhaps you might consider modifying it again to make it free? The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are listed here: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines The scilab license fails on points 3 and 6: 3- Derived works are not allowed to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. The original work may be distributed, free of charge or for a fee, for any use (this is good). Derived works may not be distributed for a fee (even as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different source) and they may not be distributed for commercial use (or distributed commercially?) 6- Commercial use : The license for derived works is a bit unclear, so maybe I interpreted it wrongly. The license should not disallow commercial use of derived works. But I think the license means to disallow commercial distribution, and not the eventual commercial use. I'm not sure. I understand that you might want to license scilab in such a way to prevent a commercial entity from selling a closed-sourced product derived from scilab. If that is your wish, you may still allow such commercial development as long as the derived works are also distributed under the terms of the original license. In this way, any compagny selling an enhanced scilab could not stop anyone else from redistributing a purchased copy freely, or from modifying it again and redistributing that other derived product. This is how the GPL works. You can base a commercial product on GPL software copyrighted by a third party, but you must allow sell your commercial product under the GPL, which means the purchaser can then give it away on the net, following the terms of the GPL. I hope you'll consider this email in the constructive spirit in which I meant it. Scilab is your software and you are free to choose whatever license you want. But if you meant it to be free, I think it falls a little short of that. Please feel free to ask for clarifications. I am not a lawyer, just a Debian developer who would like to see scilab included in Debian GNU/Linux's main archive. Best regards, -- Peter Galbraith, research scientist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada P.O. Box 1000, Mont-Joli Qc, G5H 3Z4 Canada. 418-775-0852 FAX: 775-0546 6623'rd GNU/Linux user at the Counter - http://counter.li.org/
