On Monday 19 October 2009 3:42:31 am Ben Finney wrote: > Paul Wise <p...@debian.org> writes: > > On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au> wrote: > > > This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the > > > copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this > > > in ‘non-free’? > > > > > > If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright > > > restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work > > > at all. > > > > Looks like a Debian person contacted him about this a long time ago: > > > > http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyri > >ght > > > > IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want > > Debian to rely on it. > > Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright holder > at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words: > > Note: James Larus has clarified his license in regards to how it > relates to packaging and redistribution. He welcomes the packaging > and redistribution via other media, as long as his copyright is > retained and source code is distributed. > > That's far from what we normally require: explicit written license in > the copyright holder's own words. > > > I'd suggest that upstream should provide a clear statement for > > debian/copyright that Debian (and Ubuntu) is allowed to distribute > > spim. It is a shame he refuses to change the license to something free > > (as mentioned on IRC). If he has a PGP/GPG key to clearsign the > > statement with, that would be good too. > > Perhaps the copyright holder doesn't realise that, if he grants > additional permissions that “welcome packaging and redistribution”, that > *is* changing the license (at least, the license as received by Debian). > The license terms become a union of what he's initially written plus > that extra permission statement.
Being not on the DL mailing list I don't know if there's been any movement. I talked to Larus (CC'd here) about it and he said he'd be willing to send a statement directly to the list. -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
