Re: copyright question
On Thu, Aug 28, 1997 at 06:20:09PM +0200, Francesco Tapparo wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm packaging figlet, and I've a small copyright problem:
> the figlet source does'nt have a global copyright, but different
> copyright are used in different files.
> Some files have this copyright:
> /*
> * Copyright (c) 1995, Edward B. Hamrick
> *
> * Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and
> * its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee,provided
> * that
> *
> * (i) the above copyright notice and the text in this "C" comment block
> * appear in all copies of the software and related documentation, and
> *
> * (ii) any modifications to this source file must be sent, via e-mail
> * to the copyright owner (currently hamrick@primenet.com) within
> * 30 days of such modification.
This is a little strange, but I think you can bomb him with your diff's of
the source file...
The social contract says nothing special about it.
> * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
> * EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY
> * WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
> *
> * IN NO EVENT SHALL EDWARD B. HAMRICK BE LIABLE FOR ANYSPECIAL, INCIDENTAL,
> * INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER
> * RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF
> * THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF
> * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
> */
>
> Some files have this copyright:
>
> FIGlet Copyright 1991, 1993, 1994 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai
> FIGlet Copyright 1996, 1997 John Cowan
> Portions written by Paul Burton
> Internet: <figlet-l@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu>
> FIGlet, along with the various FIGlet fonts and documentation, may be
> freely copied and distributed.
>
> This is my main problem: it does'nt mention the possibilty of modify the
> software. This copyright is reported even by figlet -v.
Yes, this is a problem.
> Some other files does'nt have copyright at all.
This is even more a problem.
> Finally, the debian copyright file of the precedent vesrion of the package
> say:
> The following copyright applies to this software:
>
> figlet (C) 1991, 1993, 1994 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai
> Internet: <ggc@uiuc.edu> and <chai@uiuc.edu>
> figlet, along with the various figlet fonts and documentation, may be
> freely copied and distributed.
> if you use figlet, please send an e-mail message to <figlet@uiuc.edu>.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If this is meant to be a part of the copyright, then it is a problem, too.
If this is only a "would be nice, bit is not important", than it should stay
far away from the copyright text, to point it out.
> In addition, the authors have approved the following copyright addendum:
>
> This program may be sold as a component of the Debian Linux
> distribution or a Linux distribution derived from the Debian
> Linux distribution. If it is distributed in binary form, the
> source code must be included in the distribution as well.
This is certainly against the social contract, that requests no special
license for debian. So you have to ask the maintainer to choose a license
like the GPL, BSD or Artistic License, or the package has to go to contrib,
I think. BTW: I don't know about the last sentence, because we only can make
it *easy* to get the source code.
> A bit suspect, if the package would be freely redistributable.
>
> What I must make now?
You should contact all the authors and explain them your situation.
Marcus
--
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god."
Marcus Brinkmann
Marcus.Brinkmann@rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/
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