Re: Wily may be non-free

[Ben Finney]

Jacob Adams  writes:

> I've now filed a bug (#872866) but, given the current state of the
> wily package, I decided to set the severity to serious.

That sounds fine, thank you for submitting that report.

-- 
 \   “I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as |
  `\   my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer |
_o__)  figure out how to use my telephone.” —Bjarne Stroustrup |
Ben Finney

Re: Wily may be non-free

[Jacob Adams]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 05:50:34AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > That seems pretty clearly non-free to be, but as it's currently in
> > Debian, I figured I would ask here before filing an RM bug against
> > wily.
> 
> I think you can make a bug report to discuss the matter. Start it at
> “important” severity because the ‘debian/copyright’ file is not
> accurate.
> 
> If the discussion does not reveal a good explanation for the source
> files that makes the work clearly DFSG-free, then the severity should be
> increased.

I've now filed a bug (#872866) but, given the current state of the wily package,
I decided to set the severity to serious. This is an orphaned package that
had to be NMUed by reproducible builds. I think that no one will probably ever
respond to the bug report and I can't find a free copy of these libraries 
anywhere.

Several ports of the sam editor to X11 use these libraries[1], and they include 
a similar
copyright notice:

/* Copyright (c) 1998 Lucent Technologies - All rights reserved. */
 
Based on this it seems remarkably unlikely that we can redistribute these 
libraries at all.
 
[1]: libframe and libXg:
https://github.com/deadpixi/sam/blob/master/libXg/Gwin.h
https://github.com/8l/sam2/blob/master/libXg/Gwin.h

Re: Wily may be non-free

[Ben Finney]

Jacob Adams  writes:

> It is currently in debian main, but appears to be non-free.

Thank you for drawing attention to this.

> However, it includes two libraries that are compiled into the final
> executable, libframe and libXg. Both these libraries contain the
> following copyright notice at the top of each file [2]:
>
> /* Copyright (c) 1992 AT - All rights reserved. */

One thing is certain: The ‘debian/copyright’ file needs to be updated
with an explanation of the copyright status of those files.

> That seems pretty clearly non-free to be, but as it's currently in
> Debian, I figured I would ask here before filing an RM bug against
> wily.

I think you can make a bug report to discuss the matter. Start it at
“important” severity because the ‘debian/copyright’ file is not
accurate.

If the discussion does not reveal a good explanation for the source
files that makes the work clearly DFSG-free, then the severity should be
increased.

-- 
 \ “It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival |
  `\   value.” —Arthur C. Clarke, 2000 |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney

Wily may be non-free

[Jacob Adams]

I was looking into the packages NMUed by reproducible builds and stumbled 
across wily. 
It is currently in debian main, but appears to be non-free.
According to d/copyright it is covered by the Artistic license [1].
However, it includes two libraries that are compiled into the final executable, 
libframe and libXg.
Both these libraries contain the following copyright notice at the top of each 
file [2]:

/* Copyright (c) 1992 AT - All rights reserved. */

That seems pretty clearly non-free to be, but as it's currently in Debian, I 
figured I would ask here before filing an RM bug against wily.

[1]: http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/debian/copyright/

[2]: http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/libXg/Gwin.h/
 http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/libframe/frbox.c/
 etc.