Le Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 02:30:59PM +0200, Frank Küster a écrit : > Petter Reinholdtsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > What about convincing the upstream developers to change the license to > > one of the free software licenses? It would solve the problem for > > good. > > Judging from the mail recorded in its copyright file, this isn't likely > to happen.
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/c/clustalw/clustalw_1.83-1.1/clustalw.copyright Dear all, Eight years have passed since the authors of Clustal gave a special permission to Debian. There could be hope that the non-exclusive licences they sold to companies have expired, removing the reason for which they are reluctant to give Clustal away for free. Indeed, as there are now some "competitors" in the public domain, I see more and more commercial products using them instead of Clustal, so it is predictable that the authors will not get revenues from this program for ever, if they still do. When the Debian-Med project will have some authority in the field of molecular biology and bioinformatics, I think that it will be a good idea to contact the academic authors of non-free software, and ask them if they would like to reconsider their choice. But for this, we need success, and for success we need to listen to our users, and our users still massively use Clustal compared to the free competitors. http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=kalign+dialign+probcons+clustalx+clustalw+muscle+t-coffee+poa+amap-align+sigma-align&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&beenhere=1 I do not know how to interpret the popcon data: either some users are swiching from the clustal programs to alternatives, or we are losing some users since clustalw was removed from testing. Already 10 % less... Ouch, it bleeds... In conclusion: by building this non-free package and allowing clustalw to migrate in testing, you will help to increase our user base and promote all the free software we promote together with clustalw: http://wiki.debian.org/SequenceAlignment PS: depending on the answer, debian-science can be a better list than debian-devel. PPS: I would bet that half of the architectures on which clustalw is missing are architectures on which nobody uses Clustal W or Clustal X, but this is another story... Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Debian-Med Packaging Team Wako, Saitama, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]