Re: UnrealIRCd Legal Status
On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Roger Ward wrote:
> What is the status of the EULA discussion about UnrealIRCd?
Last I heard, it's pretty clearly not distributable, let alone free. It
seems likely they're violating copyright if they're using any code under
the GPL not authored by them.
> The debian bug archives at http://b.d.o/148319 has a few comments from the
> previous ITP'er with a positive response from the upstream about the EULA.
I just looked, and didn't see any positive responses from the upstream.
If you can get them to use the pure GPL with no click-through, go for it.
> http://www.unrealircd.org/downloads.php?eula=1
This is an unusable license.
"THE AUTHORS MAINTAIN THE RIGHT TO MODIFY THIS AGREEMENT SO LONG AS NOTICE
IS PLACED ON THE WEBSITE 24 HOURS BEFORE THE CHANGES TAKE EFFECT. ANY
RIGHT NOT EXPRESSLY GRANTED TO THE USER ARE RESERVED BY THE AUTHORS."
Debian should never distribute software if the copyright holder has
expressed that the grant of permission is revocable. It may or may not
be, but it's a situation to avoid.
"THE USER MUST IN ADDITION AGREE TO ALL TERMS OF THE GNU GPL LICENSE
AGREEMENT."
This is completely meaningless, unless it also says that the copyright
holders grant all permissions given in the GPL. Which then obsoletes the
rest of the license.
"IF THIS SOFTWARE WAS DOWNLOADED FROM A LOCATION OTHER THAN THIS WEBSITE
AND THROUGH THE STANDARD DOWNLOAD URL OR WAS DOWNLOADED USING A METHOD TO
AVOID ACCEPTANCE OF THIS AGREEMENT NO RIGHTS SHALL BE GIVEN TO THE USER."
Nobody, including Debian, can distribute this software.
And finally, it talks about users rather than distributors or modifiers.
No use may be restricted on free software.
--
Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>
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