On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:05:40 +0000 John Halton wrote: > On Jan 7, 2008 1:38 PM, Vincent Fourmond <fourmond@gmail.com> wrote: > > It seems to me that > > the copyright notices conflict, and effectively render the file not > > distributable, but I am not quite sure; if this file is effectively a > > derived work from the work copyrighted by the Universtity of North > > Carolina, it is not distributable. It all depends on the meaning of > > "based on". What do you think ? What should be done ? > > I agree that the notices are incompatible, but I think the problem is > more fundamental. The big problem is in the licence terms for the UNC > code: > > > Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and its > > documentation for educational, research and non-profit purposes, without > > fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, > > This limitation to "educational, research and non-profit purposes" > makes the UNC code non-free. So if any UNC code is included in the > file in question, then this makes the file undistributable in main. Agreed. But I think it's worse than that, see below. > Probably OK in non-free given that Debian is a non-profit > organisation. Wait, wait: IIUC, we are talking about a work which is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL v2 or later as a whole, but includes code licensed under a non-profit-only license. The two licenses are incompatible, as you noticed, hence the Debian Project has no valid permission to redistribute the work, even in non-free. More precisely, in order to comply with Section 4 of LGPLv2, the Debian Project should distribute the whole work under the terms of the LGPL, but this is impossible without violating the UNC Chapel Hill license. Consequently, I would say that the work is legally undistributable (regardless of the archive section Debian chooses to distribute from). My usual disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP. -- http://frx.netsons.org/progs/scripts/refresh-pubring.html New! Version 0.6 available! What? See for yourself! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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