Re: newsgate non-free?
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 08:14:13PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 05:58:34PM -0400, Noah L. Meyerhans wrote:
> > > Why is newsgate in the non-free archive? I realize that there's no
> > > clear license attached to it, but the snippets of licenses that appear
> > > in some pieces of code all seem to comply with the DFSG, and the
> > > historical approach to it almost makes it seem like it's public domain.
> > > The debian/copyright file itself states that "It is one of those things
> > > grown on the Network. It is available all over the net though..."
> > >
> > > So is there any possibility of getting newsgate moved to main?
> >
> > If you can track down all the authors, and get them to re-release it under
> > a DFSG-compliant license...
>
> I claim that that's not necessary. It is very clear that newsgate
> allows both unlimited distribution and derivative works. The few pieces
> of code for which the author claims copyright are released under DFSG
> compliant terms (often not a "license" but just "you can do what you
> want with this"). Much of the code is explicitly public domain.
I'm not sure that I understand exactly what is going on here. Is it
that there are files without explicit permission? If they all have
permission, and they are all DFSG-free and compatible, then there is
no problem and it can go into main. However, there has to be explicit
permission for every file. Copyright exists even if not explicitly
stated. If there is a file or group of files that does not have
permission, then debian can not distribute it at all. It can't even
go in non-free. If there is some useful subset that does have these
permissions, then debian can distribute that.
Regards,
Walter Landry
landry@physics.utah.edu
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