Bug#290362: www.debian.org: Please add Root to list of programs that cannot be packaged

[Kevin McCarty <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU>]

Package: www.debian.org
Severity: wishlist

Hello,

Could someone please add Root (http://root.cern.ch/) to the list of software
that cannot be packaged, http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/unable-to-package
?  There have been several attempts at ITPs:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/1999/12/msg00009.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/01/msg00278.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2004/12/msg00278.html

There are two problems: first, the license [1] forbids redistribution of
modified binaries without permission of the authors, which some have argued
makes it unsuitable even for non-free [2]; second, and worse, the software
contains what appears to be code derived from cernlib (GPL) [3] and Xclass
(LGPL) [4] while having a license incompatible with either.

[1] http://root.cern.ch/root/License.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/01/msg00297.html
    http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/01/msg00281.html
[3] http://cernlib.web.cern.ch/cernlib/conditions.html
[4] http://xclass.sourceforge.net/

This is most unfortunate, since Root is a very useful tool and a number of
interesting projects are based on it, but I don't see how Debian can
legally package it, even in non-free, until upstream changes their license.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.9-powerpc
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

regards,

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu>   Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/    Princeton University
GPG public key ID: 4F83C751                 Princeton, NJ 08544