Aspell-en license Once again.
[Please CC Me as I am not subscribed to this list]
It has come to my attention that due to the discussion of a possible
problem with the aspell-en licence, Aspell-en 0.50 may not get uploaded to
Debian even though the issue was never really resolved.
Thus I will repeat my argument once again. But, this time I would like I
response to the points I made and by the end of our debate I would like a
definite answer on what should be done, if anything, to resolve the
problem.
Since SCOWL is a compilation of several word lists, one of them which in
DEC which is also a compilation of several word lists. I really do not
think there is a problem. Many many of the word lists in SCOWL are taken
the words in well known copyrighted dictionaries. So a case could be made
that many of the other word lists SCOWL uses are also also of questionable
copyright and should be removed which will lead me with nothing. I also
have a felling that this is how many of the Ispell/Aspell dictionaries are
created for other languages. So you better remove every single
Ispell/Aspell dictionary from the Debian distribution because you could be
violating some one else's copyright.
The point is that if I did not list my sources it will be virtually
imposable for some one to prove in court that I violated a copyright of
one of the word lists used in the DEC word list. Thus even if I did
violate a copyright it will virtually be unenforceable due to the very
indirect nature which I used the word lists.
Also note that the DEC Word List is used in the linux.words package which
the author claims is free of any copyright. This word list has been used
any many distributes including Debian's as "text/wenglish". So if you are
going to be anneal about Aspell word lists you should also remove this
package.
Thus I will remove the DEC word list only if 1) Debian will refuse to
include the English word list due to questionable copyright on some of the
sources that DEC uses and 2) the wenglish package is also removed from
future debian distributions since it also contains the same word lost.
But If I remove the DEC word list I will make a note on the reason
why it is removed which will include a statement by me which more or less
states that I think Durban-legal is being completely anneal about the
matter.
If the DEC word list author was not so careful to list all of his sources
this issue would never have come up.
---
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
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