Hi folks, I'm an occasional Debian user and, while doing package reviews for Fedora Extras, stumbled into the Eterm mix-of-source-licenses situation described below.
The following email was sent to the Debian Eterm maintainer. I'm forwarding it to this list because I've not (yet) received a response and because I'm curious what "right thing to do" is within the Debian packaging rules (or conventions or...?) for cases such as this one. thanks, Ed -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Ed Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: debian maintainer for Eterm -- license questions > Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 22:55:32 -0500 > > Hi Laurence, > > My name is Ed and I'm a volunteer in the Fedora project. Please pardon > the personal email -- I located your name as the current debian packager > of Eterm. Its come to my attention that various files within Eterm seem > to have conflicting license terms as described at: > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=182173 > > which is a review for possible inclusion of Eterm within the Fedora > Extras repository. In a nutshell, the various Eterm source files > include the following licenses: BSD-like, LGPL, GPL, and at least one > [src/netdisp.c] that essentially says "this code cannot be sold for > profit" which violates the Debian Social Contract (DFSG #1). > > Were you aware of these conflicting licenses? Have any of them been > re-licensed (hopefully to something that doesn't restrict for-profit > sale!) by the original authors? Or, can the software be built and used > without shipping these files? > > I'm asking because the main upstream author (Michael Jennings) seems to > think that the Fedora Guidelines (which are in some ways quite similar > to the much-older DSC) are "silly rules which discriminate against > packages for no real reason": > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=182175 > > and has not been particularly helpful as we try to sort out the overall > terms. Ultimately, we're hoping Eterm can be included in FE but its > looking doubtful. > > Any help, insight, etc. that you can provide will be appreciated! > > thanks, > Ed > -- Edward H. Hill III, PhD office: MIT Dept. of EAPS; Rm 54-1424; 77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 emails: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] URLs: http://web.mit.edu/eh3/ http://eh3.com/ phone: 617-253-0098 fax: 617-253-4464 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
