sox license (Re: Bug#92969: Non-free license in ADPCM support.)
Hi,
Just got the appended bug report, what should I do about it ?
Is there a way to let sox stay in main ?
Is the solution to build a new .orig.tar.gz without that code in,
make a new "upstream" sox with new version number ?
I wonder if the other distributions have the problematic code in there.
Guenter
On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Daniel Kobras wrote:
> Package: sox
> Version: 12.16-9
> Severity: serious
>
> Hi!
>
> Looking at sox's WAVE/ADPCM support, it appears I found a licensing
> problem. Quoting wav.c:
>
> * Added support for Microsoft's ADPCM and IMA (or better known as
> * DVI) ADPCM format for wav files. Info on these formats
> * was taken from the xanim project, written by
> * Mark Podlipec (podlipec@ici.net). For those pieces of code,
> * the following copyrights notice applies:
> *
> * XAnim Copyright (C) 1990-1997 by Mark Podlipec.
> * All rights reserved.
> *
> * This software may be freely copied, modified and redistributed without
> * fee for non-commerical purposes provided that this copyright notice is
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> * preserved intact on all copies and modified copies.
> *
> * There is no warranty or other guarantee of fitness of this software.
> * It is provided solely "as is". The author(s) disclaim(s) all
> * responsibility and liability with respect to this software's usage
> * or its effect upon hardware or computer systems.
>
> This is a violation of the DFSG, I think, and qualifies ADPCM support for
> non-free. :-( It certainly clashes with the general sox license as stated
> in debian/copyright:
>
> Copyright 1991 Lance Norskog And Sundry Contributors
> This source code is freely redistributable and may be used for
> any purpose. This copyright notice must be maintained.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
> Lance Norskog And Sundry Contributors are not responsible for
> the consequences of using this software.
>
> Sorry for the nit-picking, but I fear policy's not too happy about this.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Daniel.
>
> -- System Information
> Debian Release: testing/unstable
> Architecture: i386
> Kernel: Linux antares 2.4.3 #1 SMP Fri Mar 30 11:02:46 CEST 2001 i686
>
> Versions of packages sox depends on:
> ii libc6 2.2.2-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
>
>
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