Re: question on adding licenses from code website
Thank you both, good advice. I will ask at Debian legal for further questions.
Good news, the author actually responded to my mail and agreed to add
the license file! Hopefully he follows through. But very good to
know about the possibility of adding a link in the copyright file, I
did not know of that possibility.
regards,
Steve
On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 2:40 AM, Afif Elghraoui <afif@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi, Steve,
>
> على الجمعـة 6 كانون الثاني 2017 06:24، كتب Stephen Sinclair:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I mentioned previously that I'm interested in packaging a few bits of
>> numerical code available from some university websites that we depend
>> on.
>>
>> One is LUMOD from Stanford, and I stated that it had no license. I've
>> now been informed that I missed a page on their site where the license
>> is indeed given as optionally MIT or BSD:
>>
>> http://web.stanford.edu/group/SOL/software.html
>>
>> It consists of a single sentence at the top of that web page. Clearly
>> the intention is to make the software free, however the license is not
>> found in the downloadable zip files or any source files. I can try to
>> convince them to add it to the source downloads, but as you know
>> convincing people to change a file containing old code that has been
>> hosted there for years is difficult at best.
>>
>> My question for Debian developers is, is it ok for me to add a quilt
>> patch in my package that adds the license, or is that a no-no?
>>
>
> I don't think a quilt patch would be appropriate. I would
> simply put the license text in debian/copyright and, in the
> corresponding Files stanza, add a Comment field pointing to the URL
> where this is said. Like:
>
> ~~~
> Files: *
> Copyright: <...>
> License: MIT or BSD-3-Clause-SOL
> Comment:
> The license for this software is stated at
> <http://web.stanford.edu/group/SOL/software.html>
> ~~~
>
> The BSD license block should probably also have a link to where it came
> from:
>
> ~~~
> License: BSD-3-Clause-SOL
> <license text>
> Comment:
> Taken from <http://web.stanford.edu/group/SOL/BSDlicense.html>
>
> ~~~
>
> This looks like your best option, barring inclusion of the license in
> the source code. Are you sure there is no menion of licensing in the
> headers of the individual source files?
>
> Thanks and regards
> Afif
>
> --
> Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
> http://afif.ghraoui.name
>
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