Package: amap Severity: serious The license for amap (which is not actually in debian/copyright, but rather LICENCE.AMAP in the source) is not free because it adds additional restrictions to the GPL. The amap authors seem to have no intention of fixing this. See the following e-mail transcript, in reverse chronological order:
From: "vh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Ari Pollak'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: amap license issues Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 16:17:46 +0100 Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi! hmmm so basically I need to edit the LICENSE.GNU file to remove the license name as well as to remove the "no further restrictions" paragraph from it? ok, I will do that then for the next release ... I never read the GPL I must say :-) thanks! cheers, vh -----Original Message----- From: Ari Pollak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Dienstag, 3. Januar 2006 05:53 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: amap license issues Hi all, In the process of helping the author of pbnj (which uses nmap and amap for scanning) to package his program for Debian, I noticed some issues with the license of amap that would prevent further inclusion in Debian. It is my hope that these issues can be resolved, since amap is a very useful tool. I noticed that there are two licenses in the amap source tree, LICENCE.AMAP and LICENSE.GNU. If amap is intended to be licensed under the terms contained in LICENCE.AMAP, it may be licensed as such, but without #6. Part of the GPL is that "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein." Unfortunately, this conflicts with items 1-5 of LICENCE.AMAP. Most of the .c files in the source (except for amapcrap.c) only contain the GPL preamble and make no mention of the additional amap license, so it's not clear what the copyright holders' intentions are with regards to distribution of amap. If item #6 is taken out completely and amap is relicensed solely by the terms in LICENCE.AMAP, #2 should be made slightly less vague to make sure that both distribution of both binary and source forms of amap are freely distributable. I have no problems with amap being licensed under either the GPL or a modified amap-specific license, but putting additional restrictions on the GPL causes uncertain legal problems for people who wish to distribute amap. Thanks for listening. I hope this message cleared some things up, and I hope I included everything of concern. If you still have any questions or issues, please reply to me directly. Thanks, Ari -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
