Gesendet: Freitag, 03. Februar 2023 um 15:24 Uhr
Von: "Tobias Frost" <t...@debian.org>
An: 1030...@bugs.debian.org
Betreff: [Emc-developers] Bug#1030304: Licensing & copyright issues
Control: severity -1 normal
On Thu, 2 Feb 2023 12:10:52 +0100 Adam Ant <adam...@engineer.com> wrote:
Source: linuxcnc
Severity: serious
(Standard disclaimer: IANAL.)
Source files for libnml lack standard Debian or SPDX copyright headers.
This is nice to have, but it is not a requirement.
Also obsolete version of LGPL used.
Where is this a problem? All LGPL variants a DFSG approved. The license is
upstream's *choice*,
Source files for both the core linuxcnc & libmnl are forked and munged from a
NIST project known as the Enhanced Machine Control (EMC). The source code for this
is public domain. One can NOT take PD
code, claim copyright, and then slap an arbitrary license on it.
At best, renders the license unenforceable in many jurisdictions, or illegal in
some.
Public Domain is an accepted as DFSG compatible. As the DFSG-FAQ §15 says:
"Software placed in the public domain has all the freedoms required by the DFSG, and
is free software."
Where would be distributing PD illegal?
Kindly refer to Debian Legal
This be https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2022/12/msg00000.html ?
You've got an answer from Andrew actually. (which you should have considered as
input, when filing this bug.
In fact, you just filed this bug as if the reponse never happened. That raises
some concerns on your behaviour.)
Let me quote the relevant part for the bug:
(https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2022/12/msg00001.html)
By the same token, anyone rewriting/modifying that code also has copyright.
The author of code can apply any license they like (and can distribute the
code themselves with no licence or a licence that means that no-one else
could ever distribute it because of a conflict of licences).
And according to a comment in d/copyright, this is exactly what happened.
(As Andy pointed out, this is not legal advice. Read the whole thread)
I don't see a (RC) bug for Debian here, sorry.
Downgrading it, I'll leave it up to the maintainers to close it, so that they
can also double
check whether I've missed something when looking at this bug)
--
tobi
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