Bug#840573: unicon: DFSG-incompatible license
Hi,
2016-10-13 11:58 GMT+02:00 Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2016, Joao Eriberto Mota Filho wrote:
>
>> Source: unicon
>> Severity: serious
>> Tags: upstream
>> Justification: Policy 2.2.1
>>
>> Dear Maintainer,
>>
>> The file unicon/ImmModules/cxterm/utils/HZtable.h has the following license:
>>
>> Copyright 1994,1995 by Yongguang Zhang. All Rights Reserved
>>
>> Permission to retain, use, modify, copy, and distribute CXTERM 5.0
>> in source or binary and its documentation (hereafter, the Software)
>> for non-commercial purpose is hereby granted to you without a fee,
>> provided that this entire copyright and permission notice appear in
>> all such copies, that no charge be associated with such copies,
>> that distribution of derivative works (including value-added
>> distributions such as with additional input dictionaries or fonts)
>> include clarification that such added or derived parts are not from
>> the original Software, and that the names of the author(s) not be
>> used to endorse or promote such works.
>>
>> THE AUTHOR(S) DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING
>> ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL
>> THE AUTHOR(S) BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR
>> ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS,
>> WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
>> ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
>>
>> There is a restriction for commercial use.
>
> Probably not the intent (as this is an old license), but certainly
> it's the letter.
>
> BTW: There is a similar wording in the Perl license: "You may not
> charge a fee for this Package itself."
>
> This is an orphaned package (maintained by "Debian QA"). In case you
> use this package yourself, would you like to forward this bug upstream
> (just to see if author would be willing to change the license), or
> should we just move this to non-free?
>
> I'm Cc:ing Balint, who made the last QA upload (maybe he uses the
> package himself, I don't).
I don't use the package either.
I don't think moving it to non-free is a reasonable solution because this
license is incompatible with GPL thus unicon as a whole can't be licensed
under GPL thus it looks like it does not have a valid license.
One could argue that .h files can't be licensed, but HZutil.c also share the
same license.
One option would be asking the cxterm upstream to relicense the files under
GPL if it fails and the unicon package is not usable without those files then
it should probably be removed from the archive. :-(
Cheers,
Balint
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