Hi, (note: I am not subscribed to debian-legal, so please CC me on replies)
I have a pretty much ready package of some non-DFSG documentation that has been stripped off from the "real" package source for years: dget -x http://devel.ringlet.net/misc/mdk/debian/mdk-doc-non-dfsg_1.2.9-1.dsc (I have purposefully not placed any of these files on any part of the Debian infrastructure and I have not even yet created the collab-maint repository referenced in the debian/control file; this can all wait until we figure out whether we really have the right to do that) For reference, the actual source code of the MIX Development Kit, including all of the non-DFSG documentation, may be obtained at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mdk/v1.2.9/mdk-1.2.9.tar.gz and it ought to be byte-for-byte identical to the source package's .orig.tar.gz file. Now, most of the source package is C source for an emulator of a somewhat famous fictional computer; most of the non-DFSG-free contents is Texinfo documentation under a GFDL-1.2+ license with invariant sections, a front cover, and a back cover. This is all pretty much standard stuff; the problem lies elsewhere. There are three files that I'm not completely sure about - the doc/MIX.DOC text file and two examples. It is a copy of part of the first chapter of Prof. Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", volume 1, so the copyright holder for the text is actually the Addison-Wesley publishing house (or is it Prof. Knuth himself? MIX.DOC does explicitly point at Addison-Wesley though). Interestingly, there is also a doc/COPYING.MIX.DOC file with the following contents (between the "============" lines): ==================================================================== The file MIX.DOC, as well as the samples in elevator.mixal and mistery.mixal are a contribution from Eric S. Raymond's MIXAL. They contain the actual text of TAOCP vol 1 describing MIXAL and two verbatim programs from the book. Donald Knuth and Addison Wesley granted Eric permission for distributing the under the following terms, which we inherit: The source code in prime.mix, mystery.mix, and elevator.mix and the text in MIX.DOC are excerpted from "The Art Of Computer Programming". Addison-Wesley and Donald Knuth have specifically granted permission for this material and all other MIX code examples from that book to be distributed in conjunction with any open-source implementation of MIX under the license(s) applying to that implementation. ==================================================================== So does the Debian Project also have the right to redistribute this file, or should I, uhm, strip it from the mdk-doc-non-dfsg source package, thus repackaging even the non-DFSG source? :) My opinion is that it is arguably fine for us to redistribute this file: - in the source package it is undoubtedly "in conjunction with" the MIX Development Kit source - the mdk-doc non-free binary package Suggests and Enhances the mdk package, which IMHO may be considered distributing "in conjunction with" it; in addition, once it hits the archive, I'll upload a new version of the mdk package itself that will Suggest mdk-doc, thus strengthening the relationship even more. Of course, I know that Suggests is kind of weak (not installed by default), but still I think we'll be fine. Hmm, actually it just hit me that even though mdk may not do anything stronger than Suggest mdk-doc (no Depends or Recommends from main to non-free), the same is not necessarily true in the other direction; is it possible that the solution is as simple as making mdk-doc Depend on mdk? Thanks for reading this far, and I'd be very grateful for any clarification! G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev r...@ringlet.net r...@freebsd.org p...@storpool.com PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint 2EE7 A7A5 17FC 124C F115 C354 651E EFB0 2527 DF13
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