As bad form as it may be to follow up to my own post...
On Tue, Jun 09, 1998 at 05:22:46AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> I wonder if we'd like to make a press release about this?
I spoke to David privately a little, and he's inclined more toward a
simple release, whereas, as usual, I'm inclined more to extravagance.
I'll include both our drafts for comment.
I presume the appropriate places to send the press release would be
slashdot, the -announce list, and the web site. Local user groups
might be worthwhile too.
But on with the show.
---
To clarify and simplify the ircII license, Micheal Sandrof, Troy
Rollo, and Matthew Green are putting the ircII code under the
following license, retroactive to all versions of ircII, past and
present.
This change was prompted by the Debian project, who require that all
software in their main distribution pass the DFSG (Debian Free
Software Guidelines http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html). It
was noted that the license was not entirely clear, and an effort was
made to contact Michael Sandrof, Troy Rollo and Matthew Green, the
author, and subsequent maintainers, respectively, of ircII. This
effort was successful, and the three agreed to retroactively assign a
modified BSD license to the code.
---
---
The Debian GNU/Linux Distribution
http://www.debian.org/
Free Software: Playing by the Book
June 8, 1998
Michael Sandrof, Troy Rollo and Matthew Green, the authors of the
ircII IRC client, have rereleased it under a modified BSD license. In
so doing, they ensured ircII and the clients based on it --- including
BitchX, epic and tkIRC --- may remain free in every sense of the word.
On Saturday, April 25th 1998, Igor Grobman, a Debian developer,
reopened a bug report against Debian's prepackaged version of ircII,
which included the following passage as part of its copyright:
``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.''
This fails the third point of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, in
that it does not explicitly permit the redistribution of modified
versions of Michael Sandrof's client. In the absence of such
permission, modified versions of the client (including the current
ircII, and derivatives such as BitchX, epic and tkIRC) may not be
redistributed.
David Welton, the maintainer of the Debian prepackaged versions of
epic and epic4, took the time to contact the current developer of
ircII, Matthew Green, to determine the intended meaning of the
problematic license statement. Mr Green replied:
``While I can't change this text, I can provide you with a
fairly accurate description of the *intended* usage of
that. It meant that someone could make changes locally and
*not* distribute them if they so desired, not that they could
*not* distribute their changes.
``In any case, I cannot change the text of the license as
Michael Sandrof has not been around for at least 6 years.''
Troy Rollo, the maintainer following Mr Sandrof and preceeding Mr
Green, was then contacted to further clarify the licensing issues. Mr
Rollo pointed out that:
``There was a legitimate, but informal, transfer of rights,
however circumstances have changed significantly since those
days and something more formal is usually required now.''
Mr Rollo passed on the physical contact details of Mr Sandrof.
Numerous telephone conversations and email exchanges ensued to obtain
a license that ensured ircII was as free as the authors had always
intended.
Finally, on the 8th of June, David Welton posted a message to the
Debian Developers mailing list, entitled ``ircII is now free'',
presenting the new, free, BSD-like license of ircII.
Debian takes free software very seriously, and has a social contract
to clarify this commitment. The social contract includes the Debian
Free Software Guidelines, which Debian uses to define just what it
means by Free Software. These Guidelines have since been used as the
basis of the Open Source Definition.
Other examples of Debian's commitment to free software include
convincing the authors of Enlightenment to allow all users use of
their software --- even Microsoft employees; convincing the author of
noweb to allow derived works to be sold; and convincing the author of
ncftp to honour the GPL license of libreadline and place ncftp under
the GPL.
Debian produces Debian GNU/Linux, a free distribution of the GNU/Linux
operating system, maintained and updated over the Internet by many
users who volunteer their time and support. Debian is currently in the
final stages of testing the 2.0 release of Debian GNU/Linux.
For more information on issues in licensing Free Software, please see
the Free Software Foundation's Web Pages.
Please contact <press@debian.org> for more details.
Other resources:
ircII: ftp://ircii.warped.com/pub/ircII/
ircII License: ftp://ircii.warped.com/pub/ircII/ircii-current/
ircii/doc/Copyright
Debian: http://www.debian.org/
Debian Social Contract (including the Debian Free Software
Guidelines): http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html
Open Source Definition: http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
The Free Software Foundation (GNU):
http://www.gnu.org/
---
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``It's not a vision, or a fear. It's just a thought.''
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