Open Source-ness of ircII
Hi, I am one of the Debian developers, and am responsible for the
maintenance of our ircII-EPIC package.
It has been brought to my attention by some of my fellow debian
developers that ircII and derivatives may not be free software. I'm
not sure I concur, but I thought it would be best if I asked your
opinion on the subject.
The license used for ircII is the following:
---
IRC II is copyright (c) 1990 by Michael Sandrof. You have the
right to copy, compile, and maintain this software. You also
have the right to make modifcations to this code for local use
only.
Version 2.1.1 to 2.2pre7 are Copyright 1991, 1992 Troy Rollo.
Versions 2.2pre8 and above are copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
matthew green. Any modifications to this code may be
redistributed with this copyright attached.
---
The first part, obviously, is not very free, in that it does not allow
modification and redistribution. The second part seems to be free,
but I guess the doubts are that 1. there is no indication of transfer
of control of the program from M. Sandrof. 2. It's not a very clear
or explicit license, like the GPL, BSD, Artistic, or X licenses.
Given that neither I, nor any of the other developers are lawyers, I'm
not sure exactly what it is that would make this program plainly free,
but maybe using one of the above licenses, and indicating that
M. Sandrof transferred control of the program to you?
Our definition of 'free' software can be found at
http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines
I'll CC this to the debian-devel list, as they may have other
questions and concerns.
Thankyou for your time,
--
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
--Debian GNU/Linux--
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