On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 11:15:19PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 09:59:36AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > > > unfortunately treetool is non-free because there is neigther a > > > license nor any upstream author available. > > > > Uh, if there's no license we have no business shipping it at all. > > > > Even in non-free. > > > > Please ask debian-legal if you need clarification of this. > We have explicite permission: > > Thanks for your interest in treetool. While treetool is "free"; some > portions are copyright the University of Illlinois. I am currently working > on getting permission from them to obtain clear rights to the package; in > the meantime, I cannot place the program under the GNU license (which is my > desire). I do have permission to distribute the program, so you are > welcome to include it under the "non-free" area of Debian Linux. > > When these issues are cleared up, I will place the package under the GNU > license and let you know. Okay. What you have is a license, then; it's just a very informal one. Email from a person granting you permission to do things not ordinarily permitted by copyright law is a "license", when that person has appropriate legal standing to grant such permission. Such communications are just as valid as the GNU GPL or BSD licenses, if less formal. -- G. Branden Robinson | Optimists believe we live in the Debian GNU/Linux | best of all possible worlds. branden@debian.org | Pessimists are afraid the optimists http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | are right.
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