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Re: inofficially maintained package collection? - SPICE COPYRIGHT issues



On Sat, Jun 19, 1999 at 11:03:44AM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 17, 1999 at 09:13:33PM +0200, Joop Stakenborg wrote:
>> Believe me, spice has no license. Redhat has been packaging spice
>> for some time now. Don't understand how they did it.
>
>Bruce Perens did some research on this a few years ago, and came to
>the same conclusion (no distribution allowed). I think I even looked into
>it once. Lots of people have intended to package spice over the years!

When I was a Debian ``freshman'', one of the first things I wanted to do
was to package spice (I'm an EE).  Bruce wrote me the following (I hope
he doesn't mind citing private mail):

  Date: Tue, 27 Aug 96 17:50 PDT
  From: bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)                                            
  To: David Frey <david@eos.lugs.ch>, Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com>
  Subject: Re:  spice for Debian                                                  
  Cc: bruce@pixar.com
  
  Spice can't legally be left on FTP sites for anonymous retrieval.
  Everybody does it, but they are ignoring the license when they do so.
  There is a list of governments that it can not be distributed to that
  is set by people at Berkeley and includes things like "The
  Police Department of South Africa". There is a $200 license required
  to make a commercial distribution of it.
  
  Thus, I made and distributed a package (an a.out one long ago), but verified
  the identification of people before I allowed them to download it.
  
          Bruce

About a year later, July 1997, Philippe Troin, wanted to do the same thing
and asked on Debian-Devel (mind you, this was before the DFSG was ratified):

  Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 11:50:20 -0700
  From: Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>
  To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
  Subject: Spice copyright
  Message-Id: <199708261850.LAA05142@ceramic.fifi.org>
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
  
  I finally got an answer from UCB about Spice's copyright.
  Enclosed is my correspondence with the UCB people.
  They say that spice's copyright is described at:
  	http://hera.eecs.berkeley.edu/~software/software.agree.html
  
  Which says:
  <QUOTE>
                      RESEARCH SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT
                             (revised October 1994)
  
     This form must be signed and enclosed with your order of any software
     or documentation.
  
     This form specifies the terms under which the software and
     documentation referenced in this booklet are provided. Some specified
     software and documentation are subject to special licensing terms
     which are described within. Those terms are incorporated into this
     agreement.
  
     Software is distributed as is, completely without warranty or service
     support. The University of California and its employees are not liable
     for the condition or performance of the software.
  
     The University owns the copyright in and all other proprietary rights
     to all software and documentation provided under this agreement.
  
     Notwithstanding the foregoing, the University does not warrant that it
     owns such copyright or other proprietary rights. The University shall
     not be liable for any infringement of copyright or other proprietary
     rights brought by third parties against the licensee of the software
     and documentation provided under this agreement.
  
     THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
     INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
     PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE UNIVERSITY IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES
     INCURRED BY THE LICENSEE IN USE OF THE SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION,
     INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
     DAMAGES.
  
     The University of California grants the licensee the right to modify,
     copy, and redistribute the software and documentation, both within the
     licensee's organization and externally, subject to the following
     restrictions:
  
      1. The licensee agrees not to charge for the University of California
         code itself. The licensee may, however, charge for additions,
         extensions, or support.
      2. In any product based on the software, the licensee agrees to
         acknowledge the research group that developed the software. This
         acknowledgment shall appear in the product documentation.
      3. The licensee agrees to obey all U.S. Government restrictions
         governing redistribution or export of the software and
         documentation.
      4. For software with additional restrictions, the licensee agrees to
         all additional terms governing distribution of that software.
      5. The licensee agree to reproduce any copyright notice which appears
         on the software and documentation provided under this agreement on
         any copy or modification of such made available to others by
         licensee.
  </QUOTE>
  
  It then seems to me that spice can be packaged in Debian main 
  distribution.
  
  What do others think ?
  
  Phil.
  
Bruce answered:

  Date: Fri, 25 Jul 97 22:24 PDT
  From: bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)
  To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>
  Subject: Re:  Packaging spice and xwave
  Message-Id: <m0wrzKt-00IdecC@golem.pixar.com>
  
  From: Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>
  > About spice: this thing (v. 3f4) is distributed by UC Berkeley. There 
  > is no explicit license for it.
  
  It's messy. When last I contacted them they wanted $250 for the
  privilege of distributing it. When I asked why it was already available
  for anonymous FTP, they told me that I should only be concerned with my
  following the license, not with what others were doing with the program,
  At that time they had a list of prohibited countries. I wasn't able to put
  the software on our FTP site because of that. It might be best to
  distribute it on your own once you've established the nationality of
  the person you are sending it to.
  
  Messy. Maybe they've cleaned it up since then.
  
  	Thanks
  
  	Bruce
  -- 
  Can you get your operating system fixed when you need it?
  Linux - the supportable operating system. http://www.debian.org/support.html
  Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@pixar.com   510-215-3502
  

I don't know what has happened since then, since I haven't followed the
issue. I particularly don't know what the FSF was able to do about it;
but if the Spice people still have the same license, spice can't even
go into non-free.

David

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