On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 12:30:40PM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
> As of version 1.65 manpages from the POSIX standard are included with
> the following copyright note:
>
> The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and The Open Group,
> have given us permission to reprint portions of their documentation.
>
> In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
> of the system documentation.
>
> Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form in
> the {Product Name}, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for
> Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),
> The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the
> Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.
> In the event of any discrepancy between these versions and the original
> IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
> Standard is the referee document.
> The original Standard can be obtained online at
> http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
>
> This notice shall appear on any product containing this material.
>
> Please see <http://linuxpr.com/releases/6599.html> for an official
> announcement.
>
> I am worried about this situation since the file POSIX-COPYRIGHT
> doesn't lose a word about re-distribution, modifications and
> permission to distribute changes, neither does the press release
>
> I'm worried in particular since if the license does not conform with
> the Open Source Definition aka Debian Free Software Guidelines, which
> I fear, it would render the entire manpages package non-free. What a
> wonderful contribution to the Free Software community...
>
> Any ideas and suggestions are welcome
Modification is expressly prohibited by both groups, so unless there's
something we're not seeing, that's about as non-free as you can get.
IEEE and The Open Group are in the business of publishing
specifications and charging for copies of them, and POSIX has never
historically been a free document. I'd treat any license from them
like a live grenade.
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ |
`. `' |
`- -><- |
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