Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jérémy, Am 01.12.2012 12:28, schrieb Jérémy Lal: I thought public-domain wasn't DFSG (because it's not in some countries). That's interesting and something new to me. The public domain is listed on the page http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses , and if you look for instance at the copyright file of the sqlite3 package http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/s/sqlite3/sqlite3_3.7.3-1/sqlite3.copyright , you will see that the sources are in the public domain. Is this package targeted at non-free ? I hope it doesn't have to go to non-free. Jérémy. Best regards, Florian -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJQvHMEAAoJEGXz/obPl241ljoP/1jObHOL8IP2um4hMiGYJ/nn xiU2e9EzGhWV+TlWSDtn8Trdie+mjGm+VV4lfztPP/uLxYnoF8hiyqozo+vj5g5J m07LpXJjy9Rt+jpaiaGIgulcmfpMdwdq9t5zcMkp3E2Q5DlGdLITqTeuoKBhbMmi ZS/+N+dLyUmdXjNsEcHlUhKL8BGppywObTzCDYRy+ixTLuXJe5WtNhWU89hxf50Q v0lXra3UEMuhbWkReUMfKn2FPlvjxrFw/WpdP37KX2Wm4aOwPdX4gJwlGGlbFPaV u7PFUb5jDyNI4uiTK7zwnQCJPtDDD567BzOMHW14m3ar0MWMWLAFfoWeVsWDbBbH C59E+rc+z171maLMHJGZL6Y4GK8D561utGECCOd/24+M0T0dytjBvAbrI9PNG387 5X2BoZY4mXCWYis98uOSVnYSrGqsp58GsKs1889d0BbZuKZdGZkXAX7GW6qroTDp YXXB7b4rAyCtCgodegs5zo/71oug4HvM0XqZyYfyeJH8nTy/Uj6aOYDMbiNNQNON kQrj5U3toxdSjFB52Dpcmy8l+KTyK6zdTumzsrERZk706xQG4+YbchNgkJkp0Yd/ jp/IKk0u9l9FbkXtVV9NVTrpc/qLgHd+++Yp1Q4rOnevPJ8HPtgYd86ZNlhmiR1c bBX6bm98tyw7J3li/XI7 =yli1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50bc7304.4070...@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Francesco, Charles and Kuno, thank you very much for your helpful answers and clarifications! I didn't receive Kuno's original mail (maybe because there was no CC to me) but I hope that I got the relevant parts from the quoted paragraphs (his recommendation to use CC0 for debian/*). Cheers, Florian Am 01.12.2012 12:17, schrieb Francesco Poli: On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 10:47:47 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: Le Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 11:26:29PM +0100, Francesco Poli a écrit : P.P.S.: I am not sure what you should write in the Copyright field for the upstream files, but (c) 1996-2012 by Thomas A. McGlynn does not look right, as long as the upstream work is really in the public domain (which, as you probably know, means that the work is *not* subject to copyright!)... The machine-readable debian/copyright file format specification v1.0 (http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/) is not too clear on this point, unfortunately... Maybe you should ask on the debian-policy mailing list and suggest that this topic should be clarified in the specification. Hi Francesco, Hi Charles! the 1.0 specification mentions for the Copyright field: If a work has no copyright holder (i.e., it is in the public domain), that information should be recorded here. Yes, I had read that, but it didn't seem too clear to me. Since one of the standard short names for the License field is public-domain, I thought that specifying Copyright: public-domain License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] was awkward and redundant. Hence, I wondered what should be put in the Copyright field when the License field says public-domain... Inspecting Debian copyright files from svn://anonscm.debian.org/collab-qa/packages-metadata/ I see that many chose contents such as none, nobody, public-domain, not relevant, etc, which I think are good enough, given that the content of the Copyright field is free-form. OK, so maybe Copyright: none License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] is the way to go. I just wish that the 1.0 specification were more explicit on this point... Have a nice week-end, The same to you, and thanks for your kind reply. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJQvHF3AAoJEGXz/obPl241WEcQAJDALG3rV+psisOAA8Q51l9G 1088AZo9Y2VuQCxf282F8DmZjAay6tL2RwV5Z3hS/xyfSaUznoagLGf//JYR3LJ6 7Q3sFrjq9sWI90iIpmtNoQyQCupSt/kP0lsytXds3ZmlSM7Q/W9VfF0GvGbrA5nc wOLX+eFdLkCPe8K7m154a1/vDt8FNLAmY2FV6sjR6N1wx8Ltjm1lqTMam9cC+q3n Pik8WHouKIXO/VEpd6wLdYcu+fpVDkKc+2i5vCUtSAX9fsKz+ZDrLy7NSEIZOXXY LKHqYTYQ6/iZcUh+AOunuGYbrsw3TCCkce7mDvyilIFSKG3nL4pxhFR9aLKKUM3U Wm/2Vs8Y8h6xBnv14SHvkA7bjS4PVwoaFBt6Vs/QFaIkt6ODMQwYycmibxqhpbyO C7XYSF1ptCS2YEhUE7D6GwWkJ3Qm8COJPAIGx8U/8kGs3H8+Box4u6CpbrqFknF4 +d7vfAHH3UaS59vOboI1MpO/IkTKc+HEcH0PpDyCb/H3f70MprRkREyiiCW/7oMO iHPHvGPprvE1zBRBLPpDYGR02dNNLX+VMsIKv6wOw19W55eCs8IQt4mBIc38S5Tk HNxqg23UX7uaFCuT6rPSyxG+sApx/zjv8q67FYmVbhfGatPjH6Os7tbQPDUjbpXX a6ks1+WOreIKqIv9fs+i =pYuW -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50bc717b.8080...@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On 03/12/2012 10:38, Florian Rothmaier wrote: Hi Jérémy, Am 01.12.2012 12:28, schrieb Jérémy Lal: I thought public-domain wasn't DFSG (because it's not in some countries). That's interesting and something new to me. The public domain is listed on the page http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses , and if you look for instance at the copyright file of the sqlite3 package http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/s/sqlite3/sqlite3_3.7.3-1/sqlite3.copyright , you will see that the sources are in the public domain. Is this package targeted at non-free ? I hope it doesn't have to go to non-free. I was wrong, sorry. Still, i had that sentence from [1] in mind : US law, for instance, makes it essentially impossible to place something in the public domain via any mechanism other than dying and waiting 75 years (or whatever it is now). Jérémy. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/08/msg5.html signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 10:47:47 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: Le Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 11:26:29PM +0100, Francesco Poli a écrit : P.P.S.: I am not sure what you should write in the Copyright field for the upstream files, but (c) 1996-2012 by Thomas A. McGlynn does not look right, as long as the upstream work is really in the public domain (which, as you probably know, means that the work is *not* subject to copyright!)... The machine-readable debian/copyright file format specification v1.0 (http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/) is not too clear on this point, unfortunately... Maybe you should ask on the debian-policy mailing list and suggest that this topic should be clarified in the specification. Hi Francesco, Hi Charles! the 1.0 specification mentions for the Copyright field: If a work has no copyright holder (i.e., it is in the public domain), that information should be recorded here. Yes, I had read that, but it didn't seem too clear to me. Since one of the standard short names for the License field is public-domain, I thought that specifying Copyright: public-domain License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] was awkward and redundant. Hence, I wondered what should be put in the Copyright field when the License field says public-domain... Inspecting Debian copyright files from svn://anonscm.debian.org/collab-qa/packages-metadata/ I see that many chose contents such as none, nobody, public-domain, not relevant, etc, which I think are good enough, given that the content of the Copyright field is free-form. OK, so maybe Copyright: none License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] is the way to go. I just wish that the 1.0 specification were more explicit on this point... Have a nice week-end, The same to you, and thanks for your kind reply. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpyb8NP83DeB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
Le Sat, Dec 01, 2012 at 12:17:15PM +0100, Francesco Poli a écrit : Since one of the standard short names for the License field is public-domain, I thought that specifying Copyright: public-domain License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] was awkward and redundant. Hence, I wondered what should be put in the Copyright field when the License field says public-domain... Inspecting Debian copyright files from svn://anonscm.debian.org/collab-qa/packages-metadata/ I see that many chose contents such as none, nobody, public-domain, not relevant, etc, which I think are good enough, given that the content of the Copyright field is free-form. OK, so maybe Copyright: none License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] is the way to go. I just wish that the 1.0 specification were more explicit on this point... If you would like, you can open a wishlist bug, and if the specification is updated in the future (there is no timeline for this and my opinion is that currently it would be premature), this bug will remind us to consider adding a recommendation (and asking you at that time if you would like to summarise the contents of the Copyright field in files where License indicates public-domain). Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20121201113439.ga...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On 01/12/2012 12:17, Francesco Poli wrote: On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 10:47:47 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: Le Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 11:26:29PM +0100, Francesco Poli a écrit : P.P.S.: I am not sure what you should write in the Copyright field for the upstream files, but (c) 1996-2012 by Thomas A. McGlynn does not look right, as long as the upstream work is really in the public domain (which, as you probably know, means that the work is *not* subject to copyright!)... The machine-readable debian/copyright file format specification v1.0 (http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/) is not too clear on this point, unfortunately... Maybe you should ask on the debian-policy mailing list and suggest that this topic should be clarified in the specification. Hi Francesco, Hi Charles! the 1.0 specification mentions for the Copyright field: If a work has no copyright holder (i.e., it is in the public domain), that information should be recorded here. Yes, I had read that, but it didn't seem too clear to me. Since one of the standard short names for the License field is public-domain, I thought that specifying Copyright: public-domain License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] was awkward and redundant. Hence, I wondered what should be put in the Copyright field when the License field says public-domain... Inspecting Debian copyright files from svn://anonscm.debian.org/collab-qa/packages-metadata/ I see that many chose contents such as none, nobody, public-domain, not relevant, etc, which I think are good enough, given that the content of the Copyright field is free-form. OK, so maybe Copyright: none License: public-domain [explanation of why the files are in the public domain...] is the way to go. I just wish that the 1.0 specification were more explicit on this point... I thought public-domain wasn't DFSG (because it's not in some countries). Is this package targeted at non-free ? Jérémy. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 20:34:39 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: [...] If you would like, you can open a wishlist bug, and if the specification is updated in the future (there is no timeline for this and my opinion is that currently it would be premature), this bug will remind us to consider adding a recommendation I've just opened bug #694883 for this. Thanks for your kind suggestion. Bye. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpG5jjDUkCYu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dear Francesco, fortunately, the upstream author Thomas MyGlynn made a new release for which he added a statement that the code is in the public domain. In my debian package which can be found at http://mentors.debian.net/package/fits or http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=debian-science/packages/fits.git I chose the GPL-3 for the debian/* files but a guy from the debian-science mailing list suggested to put the Debian package under a less restrictive license. Thus my question is which license should be chosen in the case that the sources are in the public domain? Best regards, Florian Am 28.08.2012 19:19, schrieb Francesco Poli: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:37:46 +0200 Florian Rothmaier wrote: Hi to everyone involved in debian-legal, Hello! I've got a licensing issue related to the astronomical Java library fits (nom.tam.fits) from Thomas McGlynn. The newest release can be obtained at: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits/java/v1.0/v1.08.1/ . In the code, I find the following copyright statement: /* Copyright: Thomas McGlynn 1997-1999. * This code may be used for any purpose, non-commercial * or commercial so long as this copyright notice is retained * in the source code or included in or referred to in any * derived software. */ When I wrote an e-mail to Thomas McGlynn, he replied: I believe the lines you quote are themselves the entirety of the license. There was no intent to associate this with any specific more general license. Unfortunately these license lines do not seem to be enough to make the library clearly Free Software. I think they are far too vague and implicit: - the term use is ambiguous at best; does it just cover running a program that links with library? or is it implicitly intended to also cover other activities such as copying, modification, redistribution of verbatim and modified copies? - there's no explicit permission to copy and redistribute - there is a reference to derived software, but no explicit permission to create and distribute such derived software I believe that such license lines make the library unsuitable for distribution in Debian (main) or even in the non-free archive. Now, I'm not sure how to proceed. [...] I'd appreciate your help! If you want this library to be included in Debian, I think you should contact its copyright holder again and persuade him to re-license the library in a clearly DFSG-free manner, preferably under the terms of a well known and widely used Free Software license. I would personally recommend the copyright holder to re-license the library under the terms of the Expat/MIT license [1], which is very simple and similar in spirit to the goals that were probably in the mind of the drafter of the above quoted license lines. [1] http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt Thanks in advance You're welcome, I hope this helps. and please cc me in your replies since I'm not subscribed to debian-legal. Done. Bye and good luck with your persuasion effort! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJQuK4sAAoJEGXz/obPl241LcoQAK51ae/DGV8zhAWSOaHGPsRb lhEXt8gZgTtlBC1+UPL/YGAiHGjDKvZaesCdpDs97I5sraTgRHp/wtIxKliQcfvl LLIQMVuUFFEFGApdK2h31M3y6NzpwJVxTUa0o939oy2LBX714S1rRzqvyVl7i+c+ GsrGwtEsPF2beVHaiIF/Gi1fQeFILoyiPLYhtqIeB0vB4tDbk5K8S0W3kgmY3czI lqrjmJyfkry3x2ngLOZmH9wd7OqstYhVrWStXR/mw0X5cs75AGAlWhbYR0XHdtP+ g5SoLlp8uqlt2ENuzMBHxnyZKjBQIUXv2OpLDjWcCsDC87sD3zXqVqWCp58DfGXT H4w7JIhZ1IAR1k5zQ4D5fAKWogbt7Xvn2H+pim8QHVnXJUfCjGnO3Kzb7g4tShXL WKpCMo6ae7ctjarwLovGHFoWhhL7Q7K0ONhcT6ZzLxOc3nZzRRLVIkjRqPsPVKqi dfUeYQbnvcjWSnOiz+VJi/WIsjHK05OL41FWB1rPFwjMHtsi+NN9RGWN0/nYQSUT u6YoG3cO3XI7Z6hJBRomC9PhGyWasa8t/GkPeJsfqp1hAdG5k3Z4q+EKOlNUrDWh 8F+qDXhB3tqHSMivwGCkshEgoxxkVb9OGUoRu3biSxSiL3TreA10Y3QaGK5aSA6r ka3f8QfRZjsZhvcenbZn =Sjag -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50b8ae3b.8050...@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
Hello, On 11/30/2012 02:01 PM, Florian Rothmaier wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dear Francesco, fortunately, the upstream author Thomas MyGlynn made a new release for which he added a statement that the code is in the public domain. In my debian package which can be found at http://mentors.debian.net/package/fits or http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=debian-science/packages/fits.git I chose the GPL-3 for the debian/* files but a guy from the debian-science mailing list suggested to put the Debian package under a less restrictive license. Thus my question is which license should be chosen in the case that the sources are in the public domain? CC0 is the closest you can get to public domain, while still giving out a valid license for those jurisdictions where public domain doesn't work. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ -- kuno / warp. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50b8c055.9030...@frob.nl
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:19:01 +0100 Kuno Woudt wrote: [...] On 11/30/2012 02:01 PM, Florian Rothmaier wrote: [...] fortunately, the upstream author Thomas MyGlynn made a new release for which he added a statement that the code is in the public domain. Hi Florian, this seems to be really good news. Thanks for informing us! [...] Thus my question is which license should be chosen in the case that the sources are in the public domain? CC0 is the closest you can get to public domain, while still giving out a valid license for those jurisdictions where public domain doesn't work. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ I agree with Kuno that CC0 is basically equivalent to public domain, while being much more robust for all the jurisdictions where it is not possible (or not clear how) to dedicate a work to the public domain. Hence, if you want to be as permissive as the upstream author, you are recommended to use the CC0 dedication. If instead you want to keep your own copyright for the debian/* files, but you want to be fairly permissive nonetheless, I recommend you to license those files under the terms of the Expat/MIT license: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt I hope these suggestions may help. P.S.: I would even recommend the upstream author (Thomas McGlynn) to use the CC0 dedication, rather than his own homemade dedication (which may be not legally sound enough to be actually valid in most jurisdictions)... P.P.S.: I am not sure what you should write in the Copyright field for the upstream files, but (c) 1996-2012 by Thomas A. McGlynn does not look right, as long as the upstream work is really in the public domain (which, as you probably know, means that the work is *not* subject to copyright!)... The machine-readable debian/copyright file format specification v1.0 (http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/) is not too clear on this point, unfortunately... Maybe you should ask on the debian-policy mailing list and suggest that this topic should be clarified in the specification. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpQFEVbBT8HE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
Le Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 11:26:29PM +0100, Francesco Poli a écrit : P.P.S.: I am not sure what you should write in the Copyright field for the upstream files, but (c) 1996-2012 by Thomas A. McGlynn does not look right, as long as the upstream work is really in the public domain (which, as you probably know, means that the work is *not* subject to copyright!)... The machine-readable debian/copyright file format specification v1.0 (http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/) is not too clear on this point, unfortunately... Maybe you should ask on the debian-policy mailing list and suggest that this topic should be clarified in the specification. Hi Francesco, the 1.0 specification mentions for the Copyright field: If a work has no copyright holder (i.e., it is in the public domain), that information should be recorded here. Inspecting Debian copyright files from svn://anonscm.debian.org/collab-qa/packages-metadata/ I see that many chose contents such as none, nobody, public-domain, not relevant, etc, which I think are good enough, given that the content of the Copyright field is free-form. Have a nice week-end, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20121201014747.ga31...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Francesco! Am 28.08.2012 19:19, schrieb Francesco Poli: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:37:46 +0200 Florian Rothmaier wrote: Hi to everyone involved in debian-legal, Hello! I've got a licensing issue related to the astronomical Java library fits (nom.tam.fits) from Thomas McGlynn. The newest release can be obtained at: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits/java/v1.0/v1.08.1/ . In the code, I find the following copyright statement: /* Copyright: Thomas McGlynn 1997-1999. * This code may be used for any purpose, non-commercial * or commercial so long as this copyright notice is retained * in the source code or included in or referred to in any * derived software. */ When I wrote an e-mail to Thomas McGlynn, he replied: I believe the lines you quote are themselves the entirety of the license. There was no intent to associate this with any specific more general license. Unfortunately these license lines do not seem to be enough to make the library clearly Free Software. I think they are far too vague and implicit: - the term use is ambiguous at best; does it just cover running a program that links with library? or is it implicitly intended to also cover other activities such as copying, modification, redistribution of verbatim and modified copies? - there's no explicit permission to copy and redistribute - there is a reference to derived software, but no explicit permission to create and distribute such derived software I believe that such license lines make the library unsuitable for distribution in Debian (main) or even in the non-free archive. That was also my worry when I saw these lines. Now, I'm not sure how to proceed. [...] I'd appreciate your help! If you want this library to be included in Debian, I think you should contact its copyright holder again and persuade him to re-license the library in a clearly DFSG-free manner, preferably under the terms of a well known and widely used Free Software license. I would personally recommend the copyright holder to re-license the library under the terms of the Expat/MIT license [1], which is very simple and similar in spirit to the goals that were probably in the mind of the drafter of the above quoted license lines. [1] http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt After your reply, I contacted the copyright holder again and tried to explain him how the situation is and forwarded him your licensing suggestion. Now I have to wait for his reaction. Thanks in advance You're welcome, I hope this helps. Yes, thank you very much, Francesco! and please cc me in your replies since I'm not subscribed to debian-legal. Done. Bye and good luck with your persuasion effort! Thanks and best regards, Florian -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJQPx4DAAoJEGXz/obPl241tlcP/2LTMSq6DxYpBz1Tm+A5UDOS WDMwJIItYLHi3mYcFbOoDBHJT5FTmFfGjZ3s3H3uO2npiR0slNI0JYlONDI+TReq C4eWZ74iMeFnQgfBsr1S4dqlB7wZlVuLJmh2GsmkfUsL6GKGO50FPWOJsozSBLYW FEpUOfGxeFMP25V9bVcaZzI23bTuU17ZGks5bzEo/0+LAmYjrCzrf3uFUF8a5PpH d8QLEKdtm5b8Uu9M+bdcoZ5MRgiya/GvApHXS+qd7o6RyFqhARsKfA96T/tfD749 sujvXeZoaKM9Z8/WHOxM9MMQJ33U00y+Jsmf9gWMa3m+FOOs3axOIrdlAF9x8Vl4 mE5EI0YymhRjr8r6718EPIGOi6PeBJrjbZs1+sqhTmqLfDD9BQfXBwZYkANDKFIf dybyDflQAMsOaeVc8U6CHs9UdAHFpr4rvzBGjPOWcIK+9Reld+iDPKZpfvdJN/Zk wKY2ik2NOGYnNjN5m7Esz4+j8CHFIkdZx0wmSw8FZG02GHOYY3P0O1tWFCb9a+YN JZQgAGNubx7ZLYlwHuU1osXvVtgeXSpVgbXHQIhCarNJ1L3dZGT94JfSB0fDNFkO RKEySR0GRqK70tzB/UpDwHnXfZt9t4Q/FfKP2TAMPjrWn6gBZaZ4LKQMiRc7XvWU jQ8UgBdIUmfOSugOy8EE =BL/1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/503f1e09.2020...@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Re: licensing question for nom.tam.fits
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:37:46 +0200 Florian Rothmaier wrote: Hi to everyone involved in debian-legal, Hello! I've got a licensing issue related to the astronomical Java library fits (nom.tam.fits) from Thomas McGlynn. The newest release can be obtained at: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits/java/v1.0/v1.08.1/ . In the code, I find the following copyright statement: /* Copyright: Thomas McGlynn 1997-1999. * This code may be used for any purpose, non-commercial * or commercial so long as this copyright notice is retained * in the source code or included in or referred to in any * derived software. */ When I wrote an e-mail to Thomas McGlynn, he replied: I believe the lines you quote are themselves the entirety of the license. There was no intent to associate this with any specific more general license. Unfortunately these license lines do not seem to be enough to make the library clearly Free Software. I think they are far too vague and implicit: - the term use is ambiguous at best; does it just cover running a program that links with library? or is it implicitly intended to also cover other activities such as copying, modification, redistribution of verbatim and modified copies? - there's no explicit permission to copy and redistribute - there is a reference to derived software, but no explicit permission to create and distribute such derived software I believe that such license lines make the library unsuitable for distribution in Debian (main) or even in the non-free archive. Now, I'm not sure how to proceed. [...] I'd appreciate your help! If you want this library to be included in Debian, I think you should contact its copyright holder again and persuade him to re-license the library in a clearly DFSG-free manner, preferably under the terms of a well known and widely used Free Software license. I would personally recommend the copyright holder to re-license the library under the terms of the Expat/MIT license [1], which is very simple and similar in spirit to the goals that were probably in the mind of the drafter of the above quoted license lines. [1] http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt Thanks in advance You're welcome, I hope this helps. and please cc me in your replies since I'm not subscribed to debian-legal. Done. Bye and good luck with your persuasion effort! -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgp3768jPxhGC.pgp Description: PGP signature
