Dear Christian Holm Christensen, > I'm planning to make a ROOT (http://root.cern.ch) Debian GNU/Linux > package, but I'm not quite sure what thier Lisence entails, as far as > the Debian system is concerned. I've included the lisence below. The > lines that I'm concerned about are: > > Additionally, the authors grant permission to modify this > software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that > such modifications are not distributed without the explicit > consent of the authors ... > > Does this mean that the package should go into "non-free"?
Yes, it does: it clearly violates paragraph 3 of the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines <http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines> also known as the Open Source Definition <http://www.opensource.org/osd.html>): 3.Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Our experience is that `central patch control' does not scale well: if ever the ROOT team loses interest in the program or too many changes are proposed that they consider irrelevant (like patches needed to support hardware which they consider obscure or obsolete) then effectively the program is `frozen' and cannot be modified. This has happened so may times in the past, however unlikely it appeared at the time, that we *must* insist on this point. So root is non-free unless the authors change their mind! Best regards, Kristoffer -- Kristoffer Høgsbro Rose, phd, prof.associé <http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~krisrose> addr. LIP, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, F-69364 Lyon 7 phone +33(0)4 7272 8642, fax +33(0)4 7272 8080 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pgp f-p: A4D3 5BD7 3EC5 7CA2 924E D21D 126B B8E0 <[EMAIL PROTECTED],tug}.org>
