Hello members of debian-science and of debian-legal, I am writing a (desperate) call for help.
As some of you already know, oce [1] is the Debian package of OCE [2], a fork of OpenCASCADE Technology [3]. [1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/o/oce.html [2] https://github.com/tpaviot/oce/wiki [3] http://www.opencascade.org/ Its license is the Open CASCADE Technology Public License, which is by itself acceptable [4] (from a DFSG point of view), but GPLv2-incompatible. [4] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/12/msg00077.html There are a number of packages which link with both OCE and GPLv2-licensed libraries, and are thus actually undistributable. One was salome [5], but it has been removed from Debian for various reasons. Other packages affected by this issue are freecad [6], gmsh [7], and netgen [8]. [5] http://bugs.debian.org/619662 [6] http://bugs.debian.org/617613 [7] http://bugs.debian.org/617931 [8] http://bugs.debian.org/618968 I am personally trying hard to persuade Open CASCADE S.A.S. (the company behind Open CASCADE Technology) to re-license Open CASCADE Technology under GPLv2-compatible terms, in order to solve this issue once and for all. I have been pestering Open CASCADE S.A.S. since April 2009... Unfortunately, latest news [9] is that they postponed the decision (again!). [9] http://dev.opencascade.org/index.php?q=node/31#comment-63 However, several months have passed since February 2012 (at least for some definition of "several"!). Hence, I've recently resumed my persuasion effort. But I need help from other people. *Many* other people. As I repeatedly stated in the bug log [6] of #617613 (especially, please read at least the original report [10]), other people should contact Open CASCADE S.A.S. and try to persuade them to re-license Open CASCADE Technology under GPLv2-compatible terms (for instance, under the GNU LGPL v2.1). If nobody helps me in this persuasion struggle, I am afraid that the only solution will be to remove the above-mentioned packages from Debian, which is always a sad defeat! [10] http://bugs.debian.org/617613#5 Thanks for any help you can provide! P.S.: I am subscribed to debian-legal, but not to debian-science: hence, no need to Cc me, as long as debian-legal is in the loop. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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