Sorry for the wrong / confusing subject: I forgot to rename to Please choose a free license for fastml
Andreas. On Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 04:15:03PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > Hi Tal, > > I'm writing you on behalf of the Debian Med team which has the objective > to package all free software that might be relevant in medicine and > biology for official Debian. You might like to have a look into the > software in the field of biology inside Debian[1]. > > Recently we received the request to package Gubbins from Sanger > institute[2] (Andrew Page as one of the authors in CC) and I noticed > that it depends from your software FASTML. (Actually Gubbins is using > an adapted version of FASTML which is called fastml2 and maintained at > Github[3].) > > To fulfill the dependency requirement of Gubbins we also would need to > package FASTML but I noticed that the website states the following > Copyright: > > To modify the code, or use parts of it for other purposes, > permission is requested. Please contact Tal Pupko > Please note that the use of the FASTML programs is for academic use > only > > The choice of this license is a bit unfortunate since the first part > would not enable a distribution by Debian since we ship only software > that allows unrestricted modification to our users. For instance in > case of a potentially detected security problem it would not be > acceptable for the security team to ask for permission to fix the > problem quickly since this would be an inacceptable delay. > > The second restriction you are applying is the academic use only. > Software with such kind of license unfortunately needs to go to the so > called non-free section in Debian which means the package does not > belong to the official Debian distribution. The reason is that it is in > conflict with item 5. and 6. of the Debian Free Software Guidelines[4]. > The non-free section has several consequences for the package itself > (for instance it is excluded from typical quality assurance means like > regular fresh builds and test suite runs) and for its dependencies - in > this specific case Gubbins. Since Gubbins would depend from a package > in non-free it also can not be included in the main Debian distribution > even if it is covered by a free license. It could at best target at the > so called "contrib" section (=free license but depending from package in > non-free) with the same consequences that the usual quality means are > not applied. > > I wonder whether you might be willing to reconsider the license of > FASTML for the profit of Gubbins and to my personal experience also to > the profit of FASTML itself. In the past we have discussed licensing > issues with several authors of software (latest prominent example was > Joe Felsenstein with phylip which is now delivered under BSD license). > Besides the extra eyes that might look onto your code and provide > enhancements the inclusion into Debian might bring you some extra > users - or at least some estimation how many Debian users are using > FASTML (see on [1] the numbers of the so called popularity contest. > > So it would be really great if you would consider a free license. Feel > free to ask us for advise which one of the usual licenses might fit best > in your case. > > Kind regards > > Andreas. > > [1] http://blends.debian.org/med/tasks/bio > [2] https://sanger-pathogens.github.io/gubbins/ > [3] https://github.com/AidanDelaney/fastml2 > [4] https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines > > -- > http://fam-tille.de > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] > Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected] > > -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
