On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 21:05 +0200, Robert Millan wrote: > Hi Jo, > > Nice to see your newly found interest in C++ packages (though, not > completely unexpected) :-) Nothing wrong with C++ in moderation. My last ITP was a C++ browser plugin. > On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 06:26:18PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote: > > Please note that this project in its current form contains swathes of > > major copyright violations and cannot be uploaded to Debian - almost all > > source files contain Tomboy source, with Copyright unilaterally changed. > > > > Compare, for an example, > > http://gitorious.org/projects/gnote/repos/mainline/blobs/master/src/preferencesdialog.cpp to http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/Tomboy/PreferencesDialog.cs?revision=2349&view=markup > > > > This kind of rewrite is completely permitted under Tomboy's license - > > changing the copyright without the author's permission is not. > > If there's a problem, we'll get it sorted out, but I need more specific > info on your findings; the example you pasted shows a file with nor > copyright statement neither license information (from tomboy) and one > with both of them (in gnote). Please tell me which of these (in your > judgement) apply: > > - The new file seems to be asserting copyright for the code as > a whole, and it's not implicitly understood that it only applies > to the originality added to it by rewriting in C++. > > (this is somewhat contentious, since there are examples of other > programs doing the same, but it can be fixed by adding a clarification > to each file) > > - The new license (GPL v3) is incompatible with LGPL v2.1 > > (it's not; see section 13 of the LGPL v2.1) > > - There are copyright/license statements being replaced, elsewhere in > the code. > > (if this is so, please give some example) > > - Something else. > > (be my guest) GNote's source (I gave an example, but examples cover pretty much the entire source tree) includes verbatim copies of Tomboy's source. This is a reasonable way to develop a port (i.e. keep the old code there to refer to when writing new code) - however, the copyright header in the file is clearly asserting that the file is 100% copyrighted by Hubert Figuiere when it's not. Continuing with PreferencesDialog.cs as the example, compare: preferencesdialog.cpp lines 68-73 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 66-71 preferencesdialog.cpp lines 90-103 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 88-100 preferencesdialog.cpp lines 385-396 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 403-408 And so on. "* Copyright (C) 2009 Hubert Figuiere" is simply false, and a clear violation of Tomboy's license. Hubert's work is impressive, but is not his own work - it's the people in http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/AUTHORS?revision=2210&view=markup plus him. I'm not doing a detailed analysis on every file in Tomboy's source tree because frankly there's too much of it. > > Tomboy's upstream have been alerted, and are trying to contact the GNote > > author to resolve the issue > > Good to know. I'll speak with the gnote author too, but first you'll > have to give some more information, or at least point me to it :-) > > Is there some description/summary of the problem elsewhere I can check? You'd need to speak to the Tomboy people for more detail. Try #tomboy on GIMPnet > > - until then, GNote cannot be considered > > suitable for Debian. > > Sure. Btw, I'm adding debian-legal to CC, perhaps they can provide some > insight (as you know, when there are doubts about legal stuff it is > considered good practice to discuss things in that list). > > Cheers >
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