Re: elvis package
On Fri, 17 Apr 1998, Martin Schulze wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 1998 at 08:51:57PM +0100, James Troup wrote:
> > Martin Schulze <joey@kuolema.Infodrom.North.DE> writes:
> >
> > > It's free as it seems from the first view. The second view tells
> > > you it's non-free, unfortunately.
> > >
> > > Nevertheless I'm packaging it right now.
> >
> > You ask Martin not to work on elvis because it's non-free but then
> > announce you're working on the non-free vile? I'm confused.
>
> This might look confusing but the situation is different as
> the author of vile is aware of the unfreeness and distributes
> new parts under the GPL.
>
> "the bulk of vile _cannot_ be covered by the GPL due to murky origins and
> previous copyrights. however, the code that i have written (and i suspect
> this is true of contributions made by others as well) was written to be
> published, and to be shared with others. please respect this. see the top
> of main.c for the restrictions put on the original MicroEMACS code upon
> which vile was based."
>
> This is bad, too, but it's not that bad as with a package where the
> author could change the copyright but does not even re-act to get
> in discussion with us.
>
> Am I still acting unlogical? Maybe...
I am not a license expert, but from the GPL I understand that if you make
modifications to a program and you put the modifications under GPL, you
have to put the entire program under GPL, no matter what the original
license was. If the license of the original program doesn't allow this,
you get an undistributable program.
Can any license expert comment on this?
Remco
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: