I had a look at some of these restrictive licenses. Of course, IANAL, but who is? I would think that 4 of the licenses I saw allow distribution, for the packages:
foiltex ghostscript* gnuplot revtex(?) For 5 others, it seems that distribution is not possible: povray tetex-texmf texpower xforms xv In general, Fink does not change the source code, except according to the instructions to make it compile. The changes are clearly visible in the info and patch files, and the distribution is not sold commercially. Under these conditions, several of the "restrictive" licenses explicitly grant permission to distribute. I am pretty sure that this is the case for these packages: foiltex: The IBM copyright notice clearly allows the distribution, see the beginning of /sw/share/doc/foiltex/foiltex.ins. The most restrictive part is that "IBM requests that the user supply to IBM a copy of any changes, enhancements, or derivative works which the user may create." I don't think Fink creates any of these. ghostscript*: The Aladdin Public Licence in /sw/share/doc/ghostscript/PUBLIC is is restrictive only concerning commercial distribution and distribution of modified sources, but grants permission to distribute otherwise. The 0.3.2a bindist already has a ghostscript deb, BTW. gnuplot: The copyright notice in /sw/share/doc/gnuplot/Copyright allows binary distribution, even the right to "* distribute binaries produced by compiling modified sources is granted, * provided you * 1. distribute the corresponding source modifications from the * released version in the form of a patch file along with the binaries, * 2. add special version identification to distinguish your version * in addition to the base release version number, * 3. provide your name and address as the primary contact for the * support of your modified version, and * 4. retain our contact information in regard to use of the base * software." Fink follows this. (I don't even think that the microscopic patch file counts as modifying of the source). revtex: I am not sure. They say there are restrictions on the redistribution, but the file /sw/etc/texmf.local/tex/latex/revtex4/README that should contain these restrictions doesn't contain anything. On their web site they say that for version 4.0 they removed some restrictions, but I could not find any details anywhere. Some others seem to prohibit distribution: povray: The Copyright notice in http://www.povray.org/copyright.html prohibits the distribution of anything else than what they call a "full package", and this seems to allow binaries only if they are provided by themselves. For non supported platforms, only the sources may be distributed. tetex-texmf: There are many different licenses concerned. AFAICT, there are no licences that explicitly forbid redistribution, and I believe that the Fink way of packaging meets all the various requirements. But as /sw/share/doc/tetex-texmf/LICENSE says: " I admit that this makes it hard to redistribute teTeX and I'll try to clean this up for future versions. 1999, Thomas Esser" Still seems not to be cleaned up. A pity. texpower: In /sw/share/doc/texpower/00readme.txt: " It is strictly forbidden, however, to redistribute the files contained in this directory in any form whatsoever. Whomever wants to use this bundle, should download the current version from here." (this has been in alpha since 2 years, they just are not well enough organized to move ahead, but that's how it is.) xforms: This is binary-only, not even open source. It is only there because of lyx. But since we are not Linux, no way. From /sw/share/doc/xforms/Copyright: " You may not "bundle" and distribute this software with commercial systems and/or other distribution media without prior consent of the authors. The only exception is for Linux CD distribution of free software that requires xforms and in that case, xforms can be bundled and repackaged." xv: This is shareware. Distribution is encouraged. But the copyright notice seems to imply that any binary distribution must contain also the complete sources. The fink package does not even include the main README file (this is a bug, but that's how it is). HTH -- Martin _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
