On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 03:25:56PM +0000, Marco Kuhlmann wrote: > Dear list, > > I intend to package two theorem provers, otter and spass, and a > model builder, mace. Before I post the official ITP, I want to > make sure the legal stuff. [...] > Otter and MACE Legal Information [...] > Copyrights > > The University of Chicago has declined to assert its > copyrights in this software. It may be used by the public without > restriction and is available by download at www.mcs.anl.gov/AR/otter/. This places these works in the public domain, which is what something is if no copyright is held on it. This is definitely DFSG-free; when packaging it, however, I would be sure to add a "no warranty" statement. Borrow the relevant text from an existing DFSG-free license in /usr/share/common-licenses. You are free to assert copyright on your own changes, packaging infrastructure, etc. If you do so, be sure you specify a license for that copyrighted material. Content-Description: License for SPASS [...] > You may use, copy, modify and distribute this software for any > non-commercial and non-safety-critical purpose. Use of this software > in a commercial product is not included under this license. You must > maintain this copyright statement in all copies of this software that > you modify or distribute. This clearly fails DFSG 6, "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor". You want to contact the copyright holder(s) and ask them to relicense this work under a DFSG-compatible license. The MIT, 2-clause BSD, or 3-clause BSD licenses might be to their liking, as they appear to be unconcerned with copyleft issues. You can of course try to sell them on the GPL, if you want. Thanks for raising your concerns on debian-legal. Good luck, and thanks for taking the trouble to research this software. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | Please do not look directly into branden@debian.org | laser with remaining eye. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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