Good morning,
On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 7:11 PM, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Oct 06, 2014 at 05:36:44PM +0100, Jorge Sebastião Soares wrote: > > Good hearing from you. > > :-) ditto > > > > As far as I know a package with no license at all is simply not > > > redistributable ... since it is lacking the permission to be > distributed > > > (even in non-free). > > > > > > I now see how much it sucks... > > > > > > > May be there are alternatives with the same > > > functionality or we try to convince the author to pick at least any > > > license (also for his own safety!) - preferably a free one. > > > > I had a chat with gubbins upstream and I was told not to contact the > Fastml > > author. :( > > I admit I'm not a fan of "I was told" statements. Nobody should tell a > grown up what he should do in free software aspects. > > Neither am I. It's a touchy subject at the moment. > > Nonetheless I managed to convince gubbins upstream to ask the Fastml > author > > about a license. > > > > Reply: He doesn't care about licenses at all. > > > > Let me have a chat around the office again tomorrow. See if we can get > the > > guy to pick something. > > It could even be Expat. If he is afraid that big evil corporations will > > make money from his code releasing it as GPL#. (this was hinted in the > > conversation I had with gubbins upstream, but not sure this was what the > > Fastml author had in mind) > > You might like to see for "Joe Felsenstein phylip" on the Debian Med > mailing list to seek for previous occurances of this argument. BTW, no > license at all makes you even less safe against "big evil corporation". > I totally get this. I reckon that a lot of academic software developers just don't understand licenses. > > > > Just for > > > the name similarity (*ML): We just managed to convince an author of > > > some frequently used, long standing non-free license to pick a free > > > one[1]. > > > > Well done on the Phylip petition. I did sign it... I'm happy I did. > > Finally it would have worked even without the petition as far as I can > say when the copyright owners realised that they made less not even > a three digit number of $ income per year ... > Hehe. So they were actually charging. I guess for commercial use. Anyway, I will send you a personal email, but for now this project is on hold... Regards, Jorge
