the relevant file is:
http://plplot.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/plplot/trunk/lib/nn/README
I would note that AFAIK nn is only a small part of plplot, the greater
package is not subject to this license.
To expand on the suspected problems,
1) copyright transfer means you can't distribute your modifications
without permission of CSIRO. i.e. it isn't explicit that your back-
contributed modifications will be distributed under the same license as
the source. Perhaps that's a bit harsh of a reading though and the
"REMAIN" word makes clear the intention that redistribution of changes is
naturally ok.
2) what does "without charge" extend too?
i.e. can you charge for binaries as allowed by the GPL but it becomes
problematic with the "nominal reproduction fee" allowed for copies of the
source code? Or as the common distribution method these days is over the
internet, media via mail now falls into the "no weaseling out by
delivering code on punch card media" clause?
note plplot is apparently licensed as LGPL and the discussion was WRT
including nnbathy in GRASS GIS, which is GPL. See also that discussion
on grass-dev:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.grass.pkg.general/2994
The original author (Pavel) mentioned in a private email that this has
already been the subject of a long debian thread and it was decided that
everything was ok. So we should look for that in the archives and study
it before getting into too much of a swirl. The copyright is his former
place of employment, so he doesn't easily have the ability to "just
change it". He seemed to think the main problem was with the "triangle"
package, which was already replaced.
The spirit of the license seems healthy enough (Pavel seems to believe/
intend that it is GPL compatible), the worry is that the letter of it
could be misinterpreted.
regards,
Hamish
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
