> It appears that redistribution of that > document in its entirety is permitted, however nothing is said about > partial > extracts. >
Partial extracts (in the code), to which those extracts **reference** back to the original document, fall under FAIR use. > Do we (and upstream) have permission to distribute the resulting source > code (as GPL or otherwise)? > Yes. Per the copyright notice, it retains the ability to be freely redistributed. > Should Joseph O'Rouke be listed in the debian/copyright file? > If you include a copy of that FAQ within the package (which you should), then yes. > On January 26, 2017 at 9:22 AM Joe Healy <joehe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > This may be a question for upstream rather than debian, but I thought I > would start here to see if anyone was aware of this issue or had dealt > with it previously. > > At a number of places in the source code for postgis, reference is made > to the comp.graphics.algorithm FAQ [1]. > > As an example, see the comments at [2]. This appears to be a fairly > direct lifting of text from the FAQ, a document which a Joseph O'Rouke > is (claims to be?) the author of. It appears that redistribution of that > document in its entirety is permitted, however nothing is said about > partial > extracts. > > > This article is Copyright 2003 by Joseph O'Rourke. It may be freely > redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice is > not removed. > > > Joseph O'Rourke does not appear to be listed in the debian/copyright file > [3]. > > This gives rise to two questions (unfortunately rather pedantic > questions): > > 1) Should Joseph O'Rouke be listed in the debian/copyright file? > 2) Do we (and upstream) have permission to distribute the resulting > source code (as GPL or otherwise)? > > Hopefully this is not opening a can of worms. > > Thanks, > > Joe > > [1] http://www.faqs.org/faqs/graphics/algorithms-faq/ > [2] > https://github.com/postgis/postgis/blob/svn-trunk/liblwgeom/measures.c#L2061 > [3] > https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-grass/postgis.git/tree/debian/copyright >
