Dear Andreas, I've asked Steve Henikoff to check with FHCRC's Technology Transfer office to see if we can change the license to GNU-GPL. (The latest version of SIFT (SIFT 4 Genomes is a hybrid license of GNU-GPL and FHCRC), so this will simplify things later. Please email me in 2 weeks time if you haven't heard from me.
Also, because I wrote the SIFT algorithm, I'd like to benchmark and check the code that debian-med packages. I think there are several version of SIFT out there. What is the latest release version that you'd like to use? Thanks, Pauline On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Pauline, > > On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 09:59:14AM +0800, Pauline Ng wrote: > > The Henikoffs and I received your email about regarding changing the > > license of blimps and SIFT to GPL. We are willing to consider it if SIFT > > can be easily distributed. Do you have a working version of SIFT on > > debian? > > Currently version 4.0.3b is packaged and I know that this is not the > latest released version. One reason for this lag behind is the fact > that SIFT remains in non-free which does not receive the apropriate care > - thus the motivation for my mail to tackle the latest version if there > would be a free license. > > > My old version of SIFT uses a very old version of blast and calls a > binary > > of blimps --I think the source code has been since lost. > > The Debian version of SIFT is linked against a separately packaged > version of blimps 3.9. I noticed that the downloadable tarball > sift5.2.2.tar.gz contains a dir blimps/blimps with C sources (and even > *.o files which should not be distributed inside a tarball). I also see > a dir blimps/bin which we would clean up from the tarball since we > usually do not ship precompiled binaries in the source tarball. > > > If you can can confirm that SIFT works in debian, then Dr. Henikoff will > > talk to the FHCRC tech transfer office to start the process. > > I can confirm that the Debian Med team got the old version of SIFT > working and we will try or best to get also the latest version working. > However, please make sure that the license change is not only for the > purpose of distribution inside Debian but rather in general since a > specific free Debian license is also considered as non-free by the > Debian Free Software Guidelines. > > > Thanks, > > Pauline > > Thanks a lot for your fast response > > Andreas. > > > Hello, > > > > > > > > I'm writing you on behalf of the Debian Med team which is a group inside > > Debian with the objective to make Debian the best distribution for > biology > > and medical care. We try to package free software that is relevant in > > these fields for main Debian. > > > > > > > > You might know that there are packages of blimps and sift for some time > > which are not part of the official Debian distribution due to its license > > which is considered non-free since it violates the Debian Free Software > > Guidelines[1]. We would really make blimps and sift part of the official > > Debian distribution which has several advantages for users as well even > for > > you as developers since the wider spreading of your code might lead to > > enhancements that will be send to you. > > > > > > > > We would like you to reconsider the restriction under the following > > > > considerations: > > > > > > > > - Did you earned a mentionable amount of money by selling mssstest > > > > yourself? > > > > - Do you consider that anybody else would earn a mentionable amount > > > > of money by selling a freely licensed program? > > > > - Would you agree that it is in the interest of mssstest code and > > > > the users to have a free distribution inside Debian? > > > > > > > > Please keep in mind that the restriction implies that the programs cannot > > be included as part of a distribution that is sold (even if it's just to > > compensate for the cost of the storage media). Your intention is almost > > certainly to prevent people to sell the program standalone. > > > > > > > > To our experience authors who used this kind of license (for instance Joe > > Felsenstein as author of PHYLIP) did not considered this as a success. > May > > be you reconsider the license to choose some free license like GPL; BSD > or > > MPL - feel free to discuss this here on our mailing list. > > > > > > > > It would be great if you would simply drop the restriction and enable us > to > > integrate blimps and sift into Debian properly. > > > > > > > > Kind regards > > > > > > > > Andreas. > > > > > > > > > > > > [1] https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines > > > > > > > > -- > > http://fam-tille.de > > -- > http://fam-tille.de >
