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Re: cfitsio license change



Hi Ole,

On 2024-05-14 20:44, Ole Streicher wrote:
> Hi Aurelien,
> (Cc: debian-astro)
> 
> Astropy just discovered [1] that cfitsio 4.4.0 is now under the NASA Open
> Source Agreement 1.2 (see licenses/LICENSE.txt). While this license is OSI
> approved [2], Debian sees it as not compliant with the DFSG [3].
> 
> This license change was done silently, it is not mentioned in the changelog.

Yes, I have seen the license change, but hadn't look at it in details
yet, thanks for doing so.

> I am not sure whether this is the reason that cfitsio-4.4.0 is not uploaded
> to Debian yet and if you are already aware of this.

The main reason for not packaging 4.4.0 was that cfitsio was affected
by the time_t transition, problems with the cfortran.h changes and then
lack of time...

> If we can't get the
> license change reverted, it would have catastrophic consequences for the
> astronomy ecosystem on Debian: many programs depend on it, and while we
> probably can still stick with an older version, the dependencies may come
> with updated dependency minversions in future.

If it is confirmed that the license is not DFSG free, this is indeed a
big issue.

> Probably the best way would be to contact upstream and discuss this; maybe
> you already did this? Or do you have other ideas how to resolve the problem?

Looks like your mail already achieved that, thanks to Leo for jumping on
that.

Cheers
Aurelien

-- 
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aurelien@aurel32.net                     http://aurel32.net

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