Re: Question on gnuplot licensing and why it is in main
Henning Makholm wrote: No, because the quoted license explicitly allows the distribution of binaries built from modified sources. That kind of patch-clause licenses is specifically blessed by DFSG #4. OK. I think understand. qmail and pine are non-free because they disallow binary distribution, period. gnuplot can go into main since the Debian project distributes sources as a .orig.tar.gz and a .diff.gz (except for native Debian packages like apt)? For instance, if DFSG required the ability to distribute complete modified source as one monolithic entity, then that would be incompatible. Correct? I am just trying to make sure that I understand this, for my own edification. -Roberto P.S. Please CC me, as I am not subscribed to -legal. -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Question on gnuplot licensing and why it is in main
Scripsit Roberto C. Sanchez [EMAIL PROTECTED] OK. I think understand. qmail and pine are non-free because they disallow binary distribution, period. gnuplot can go into main since the Debian project distributes sources as a .orig.tar.gz and a .diff.gz (except for native Debian packages like apt)? Yes, and (more importantly) because the DFSG explicitly allows license that requires such a split scheme for distribution of source. -- Henning MakholmUnmetered water, dear. Run it deep. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Question on gnuplot licensing and why it is in main
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 09:36:02 + Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Roberto C. Sanchez [EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] * 3. provide your name and address as the primary contact for *the support of your modified version, and [...] No, because the quoted license explicitly allows the distribution of binaries built from modified sources. That kind of patch-clause licenses is specifically blessed by DFSG #4. Yes, patch-only licenses are allowed by DFSG. The above quoted clause worries me a bit, though. Identifying yourself seems to be a necessary condition for distributing modified binaries... Does this pass the Dissident test? -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgp3fYtOyAIKd.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Question on gnuplot licensing and why it is in main
Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * 3. provide your name and address as the primary contact for *the support of your modified version, and The above quoted clause worries me a bit, though. Identifying yourself seems to be a necessary condition for distributing modified binaries... Does this pass the Dissident test? No. Does this matter? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Question on gnuplot licensing and why it is in main
While looking at the gnuplot documentation (trying to figure out how to make a bar graph) I came across this in the FAQ: 1.6 Legalities Gnuplot is freeware authored by a collection of volunteers, who cannot make any legal statement about the compliance or non-compliance of gnuplot or its uses. There is also no warranty whatsoever. Use at your own risk. Citing from the README of a mathematical subroutine package by R. Freund: For all intent and purpose, any description of what the codes are doing should be construed as being a note of what we thought the codes did on our machine on a particular Tuesday of last year. If you're really lucky, they might do the same for you someday. Then again, do you really feel *that* lucky? 1.7 Does gnuplot have anything to do with the FSF and the GNU project? Gnuplot is neither written nor maintained by the FSF. It is not covered by the General Public License, either. It used to be distributed by the FSF, however, due to licensing issues it is no longer. Gnuplot is freeware in the sense that you don't have to pay for it. However it is not freeware in the sense that you would be allowed to distribute a modified version of your gnuplot freely. Please read and accept the Copyright file in your distribution. So, I checked the copyright file and found this: * Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to * distribute the complete modified source code. Modifications are to * be distributed as patches to the released version. Permission to * distribute binaries produced by compiling modified sources is granted, * provided you * 1. distribute the corresponding source modifications from the *released version in the form of a patch file along with the binaries, * 2. add special version identification to distinguish your version *in addition to the base release version number, * 3. provide your name and address as the primary contact for the *support of your modified version, and * 4. retain our contact information in regard to use of the base *software. * Permission to distribute the released version of the source code along * with corresponding source modifications in the form of a patch file is * granted with same provisions 2 through 4 for binary distributions. This seems very similar to the pine and qmail licenses (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/license-list.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense) which would make it non-free. Is this correct? Should a bug be filed against the gnuplot* packages? -Roberto P.S. please CC me as I am not subscribed to -legal -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
