Package: spellcast Version: 1.0-14 Severity: serious Justification: Policy 2.1
Recommendation: remove-from-testing, (probably) remove-from-unstable As per the recent licence discussions on debian-legal[1], I believe that the licence for spellcast to be non-conformant to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. As such, it should be removed from the main archive and, if desired, re-uploaded to the non-free queue (where I believe it would be appropriate). I think it should be removed from testing immediately, so that this software doesn't make it's way onto a CD set which would be sold by our CD vendors, with the decision to be removed from unstable to be made at a more leisurely pace. The general gist of the problem is that the original "licence" (if you want to call it that) was very vague, and clarifications by the original packager of spellcast (Ben Gertzfield) only managed to make it clearer that the upstream author (based on the wishes of the game's designer) wanted to disallow commercial distribution. This is clearly a practical problem for CD vendors, who may sell their CDs at a profit, since the game designer (Richard Bartle) said that people can't sell his work for a profit, but "if they charge for it to cover distribution costs, well, OK." The complete licence information in the copyright file for spellcast is archived at [1]. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200310/msg00136.html - Matt
