Re: torque license change
Dominique Belhachemi <domibel@debian.org> writes:
> But now there is a license change in upstreams new torque packages (>=2.5)
> and I am not sure how to handle this new situation.
Thank you for taking the situation seriously and seeking advice.
> They added a new license (torque-2.5.9/PBS_License_2.5.txt) to the
> source package and moved the old license to
> (torque-2.5.9/contrib/PBS_License_2.3.txt)
What is the exact text of the license grant? Putting a license text in a
work is not an effective grant of license.
(Otherwise, a work consisting of seventeen license texts with no license
grant would implicitly be licensed under all of them simultaneously. I
think that's clearly not the case.)
Instead, there needs to be some text from the copyright holder that says
“You (the recipient) are free to FOO, BAR, BAZ this particular work
under the terms of EXACT_LICENSE_TERMS.” or something to that effect.
That is what will tell you exactly which license terms apply to which
parts of the work.
> I am posting both licenses below for convenience. Is the license change
> legal?
Most of us are not lawyers, so our opinion on what is legal should not
be very convincing to you. If it is important to you to know whether
something is legal for you to do, please consult trained legal
professionals.
I will assume you meant to ask whether the work would be acceptable in
Debian with its new license.
> How should the new debian/copyright file look like?
That depends on what license grants there are in the work.
I will withhold comment on the license terms until you say what licenses
actually apply to what part of the work.
--
\ “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will |
`\ not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog |
_o__) and a man.” —Mark Twain, _Pudd'n'head Wilson_ |
Ben Finney
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