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Re: Package copyright problems



On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 03:34:07PM +0000, Benjamin A'Lee wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 12:22 +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> > Scripsit Jesse van den Kieboom <jesse@icecrew.nl>

> > > My situation is as follows. The application itself is GPL licenced, but
> > > some of the code has been taken from the lambdamoo server. The lambdamoo
> > > source is copyrighted with the following copyright:

> > >   Copyright (c) 1992, 1995, 1996 Xerox Corporation.  All rights
> > > reserved.
> > ...
> > >  Any distribution of this software or derivative works must comply
> > >  with all applicable United States export control laws.

> > This is a non-free condition.

> Surely it'd only be non-free if it said "must comply with United States
> export control laws"?  Outside the US, US export laws are not
> applicable, so the condition doesn't apply.  Or am I missing something?

Compliance with the law should not be a condition of the license.  The law
already has its own penalties for non-compliance; users shouldn't have to
worry about copyright holders of the software they're using adding to those.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/

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