Hi,
On Wed, Jun 14, 2000 at 04:55:55PM -0400, Jeff Sturm wrote:
> > > Hmm. It's in nonfree in debian, which I generally trust as a good
> > > indicator. I wonder why that is...?
> >
> > Looks free to me. http://www.freesoftware.com/pub/infozip/doc/LICENSE
Highly offtopic, but the reason unzip is currently in non-free is because
Debian includes UnZip 5.40 which has a free as in beer license.
The license for 5.41 (referenced above) is free.
(5.40 license: <http://cgi.debian.org/cgi-bin/get-copyright?package=unzip>)
> Again I don't remember the details, but this looks suspect:
>
> 3. "Altered versions ... must be plainly marked as such"
>
> it would appear to violate the "Derived Works" clause in the Debian Free
> Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines):
>
> 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.
That does not contradict each other. The license is still the same, you
are only required to mark changed versions as changed by you and use a
different name of the program.
> GNU does incorporate some non-GPL software. I don't know if Info-ZIP
> would be acceptable, however.
Notice that the GPL clause 2 says almost the same thing:
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
[...]
Which is why you should always keep a ChangeLog file when hacking on
software that is distributed under the GPL. (OK, the real reason to
keep a ChangeLog is to help your fellow hackers understand what changed,
when it was changed, who changed it and why it was changed :)
Cheers,
Mark
