Re: is the license of gsview okay?
On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 10:18:45AM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> I am interested in gsview which is famous in Windows users
> and a kind of ghostview or gv. But I am not sure if its license
> permits us to upload to Debian or not.
Why do you want to package it? It's not like it fills a need that
can't be filled with free software.
> GSview is copyright by Ghostgum Software Pty Ltd.
> GSview is distributed with the Aladdin Free Public Licence.
> This licence is contained in the file /usr/share/doc/gsview/LICENCE
Fine for non-free.
> pstoedit is Copyright by Wolfgang Glunz and is licensed with
> the GNU Public Licence (GPL). Binaries are included in
> GSview with the permission of Wolfgang Glunz.
Fine. (GPL is fine as long as it's not linked with non-GPL. This
is a seperate binary, so it's all right.)
> GSview uses pstotext in an external DLL. pstotext was written by
> Andrew Birrell and Paul McJones. It is
> Copyright (C) 1995-1996, Digital Equipment Corporation.
> See the licence in pstotext.txt or pstotext.zip for more details.
> (3) The Software may not be transferred to any third party
> unless such third party receives a copy of this Agreement and agrees
> to be bound by all of its terms and conditions.
This is the only part that seems non-free. If I read this right, it's
a restriction on distribution Debian can't satisfy even in non-free; we
would have to make sure anyone we distributed to agreed before we gave
them a copy.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
Reply to: