Re: Cactvs-license

[Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net>]

Thanks for your answers!

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 09:07:24PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 04:39:43PM -0700, Walter Landry wrote:
> > However, you said that the author is resposive.  At a minimum, I think
> > that the paragraph
> > 
> > > The tool set can be distributed as part of other non-commercial program
> > > packages, but only in its original, unadapted form.  If anybody is
> > > interested in providing the tools as integrated part of another
> > > package, this must be negotiated.
> > 
> > has to go.  I don't think that special permission for Debian will
> > work.
> 
> A requirement for special permission for Debian is ok in non-free,
> if that special permission has been granted.

OK, I'll ask him about this.

> >  Also, the phrase
> > 
> > > You may adapt the functionality of the program to your local needs,
> > > but you are forbidden to redistribute copies of the files comprising
> > > the software which were altered in any respect. If you add a
> > > valuable feature, or hunt down a bug, you are welcome to contact the
> > > author by email (wdi@ccc.uni-erlangen.de) and the fix or feature
> > > will be most certainly integrated into the one and only official
> > > release.
> > 
> > is worrisome, since that means that any security problems or serious
> > bugs will kick it out of Debian, even if the fix is trivial.  This is
> > even more pressing since you said that the project has mostly stalled.
> 
> This means that if there's a security problem or a "damages the user's
> system" problem we'll have to replace the insecure package with an empty
> package with a note explaining the conflict introduced by the license.

That would be reasonable.

> All in all, this doesn't sound like a great situation, but if enough
> people value it, maybe it's worth putting some effort into it...

We'll see. The program is a mixture of shared libraries, Tcl/Tk (with
its own environment) and other stuff. I had a look at SuSE's
rpm-package - they basically did a 'mv cactvs.tar.gz cactus.rpm' On the
other hand, I read some other opinions on this package, and it seems to
be quite alright. We'll see. 

I assume you don't mind that I forward your answers upstream?

thanks a lot,

Michael