xmysqladmin license non-free (no modification) ?
I opened a bug against xmysqladmin (it has nothing to do with an
XForms exception clause!) :
> The license is simply:
>
> | I reserve the copyright to xMySQLadmin. However, you are permitted
> | to use and distribute xMySQLadmin, provided that you
> | (a) distribute it with the full sources, and
> | (b) that you leave this documentation and
> | copyright notice intact.
>
> We don't distribute with full source, so we're not allowed to
> distribute it? [I meant that we ship a binary-only package
> that does not contain sources, that CD vendors may put on a
> binary-only CD and braek the license]
>
> However picks up this package should try to obtain the same
> license change as xmysql, or package the source separately
> as done with the tetex-src package.
Martin Bialasinski wrote:
> A Debian package consists of the binary- and the source
> package. Together, they form the version of a program we
> distribute. So we do distribute xmysqladmin with full sources,
> just as the license demands.
So it's unclear whether we met the license requirements on this,
or at least make it easy for CD vendors to break the license, and
not many people have commented. Christoph Martin informed us that
tetex-src because the orig.tar.gz file were stripped of
documentation that must be redistribution, and so they are in a
separate tetex-src package. This might argue that we do
distribute sources of xMySQLadmin in the form of the orig.tar.gz
file, and that we do met the license requirements (never mind the
CD vendors). I'll let the legal minds of debian-legal make a
decision on this, I'm just summarizing the situation for them.
However, I just noticed that the license doesn't say that we are
allowed to _modify_ the software. This would make it not
DFSG-compliant and therefore non-free. So perhaps we do met the
terms of the license about distributing sources, but it should be
moved to non-free because we aren't allowed to modify it. My bet
is that this is not the intent of upstream, and Martin
Bialasinski could request a license change or clarification and
settle this situation.
Peter Galbraith <psg@debian.org>
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