On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 03:22:00PM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: > James Troup, one of the 'gatekeepers', so to speak, has the following > to say about the license for tcldom. As a consequence, I'm writing > you to suggest that clarifying it (i.e. add something about > modification as per a standard BSD license), and also to the > debian-legal (not really lawyers or anything like that, although maybe > they have signed a few up?) group to see what they think of the > current license, which I have included at the end of the email. > > At a practical level, this software is without a doubt open source, as > it is used, distributed and modified on sourceforge. I can see where James is coming from. Keep it mind that the whole community got very badly scorched by the University of Washington's old license on PINE, which *looked* at least as free as this license, but then UWash's legal department weaselled it into meaning "distribution of modified copies is not allowed". While the Zveno folks may be above reproach, it is difficult for the Debian FTP admins, or even the debian-legal mailing list, to establish this in every case. Finally, people die and corporations get bought and sold, so the paragon(s) of virtue who once held copyright on a work of free software may not continuously do so until it passes into the public domain. For all these reasons, I think it is best to get clarification from upstream authors when possible. > Copyright (c) 1998-2002 Zveno Pty Ltd > http://www.zveno.com/ > > Zveno makes this software available free of charge for any purpose. > Copies may be made of this software but all of this notice must be included > on any copy. > > The software was developed for research purposes only and Zveno does not > warrant that it is error free or fit for any purpose. Zveno disclaims any > liability for all claims, expenses, losses, damages and costs any user may > incur as a result of using, copying or modifying this software. This license does not explicitly grant permission to distribute modified copies. That is a right that is usually reserved to the copyright holder. The warranty disclaimer is by its nature grounded in almost completely independent areas of law, and furthermore, it doesn't imply any expectation that modifications of "this software" will be distributed. It's just telling you that if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces, even if you diddled it first. I recommend the MIT/X11 license for folks who seem to have the intentions your upstream does: Copyright $YEARS, $HOLDERS Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL $HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. I hope this helps. -- G. Branden Robinson | I am sorry, but what you have Debian GNU/Linux | mistaken for malicious intent is branden@debian.org | nothing more than sheer http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | incompetence! -- J. L. Rizzo II
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