Re: SNNS: does it really belong into non-free?

[Peter S Galbraith <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>]

My wording is taken from the Artistic license.
See /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic

The relevants parts are:

        "Package" refers to the collection of files distributed by the
        Copyright Holder, and derivatives of that collection of files
        created through textual modification.

        "Copyright Holder" is whoever is named in the copyright or
        copyrights for the package.

        "You" is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing
        this Package.

        "Reasonable copying fee" is whatever you can justify on the
        basis of media cost, duplication charges, time of people involved,
        and so on.  (You will not be required to justify it to the
        Copyright Holder, but only to the computing community at large
        as a market that must bear the fee.)

        "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item
        itself, though there may be fees involved in handling the item.
        It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it
        under the same conditions they received it.

 5. You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this
 Package.  You may charge any fee you choose for support of this
 Package.  You may not charge a fee for this Package itself.  However,
 you may distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly
 commercial) programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial) software
 distribution provided that you do not advertise this Package as a
 product of your own.

If the author thinks this is okay, the best thing to do is for
him to switch to the Artistic license and be done with it.  To be
completely honest with the author, you might mention that the
Artistic leicense is only DFSG-compliant because the `no-selling'
clause is so diluted that it's unenforceable.  I like to explain
to authors that using the GPL (which allows selling) does not
mean someone will make a bundle selling your stuff.  In fact,
including the softweare in a widely distributed and net-known
distribution such as Debian just about guarantees people can't
make a bundle selling your stuff.  You can get it for free or
very cheaply so easily.  I convinced an author to go from a
`no-selling' license to the GPL with this argument.

Peter

Siggy Brentrup wrote:

> Peter S Galbraith <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca> writes:
> 
> > Well, if the above were diluted a bit it would be as
> > DFSG-compliant as the Artistic license (e.g. You will not be
> > required to justify it to the Copyright Holder, but only to the
> > computing community at large as a market that must bear the fee.)
> 
> After reading Peter's e.g. twice, I finally get what he means (not
> your fault :) and think that might be acceptable keeping the CR
> holder's intent.
> 
> If some native english speaker can come up with a precise wording,
> I'll email the authors politely (in german) summarizing why the DFSG
> (IIRC the license is older than the DFSG) forces SNNS into non-free
> and suggesting an acceptable way to get it back into main.