[I hope Mr. Lea doesn't mind the CC.]
On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 10:57:47PM -0400, Steven Barker wrote:
[snip]
> I wrote Prof. Lea and asked if he has permission to distribute these
> classes, and how this permission might apply to Debian. He sent me
> the text of a license he has signed with Sun:
> > Copyright (c) 1994-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights
> > reserved. Sun hereby grants Doug Lea a non-exclusive, worldwide,
> > non-transferrable license to use and distribute the Java Software
> > technologies as a part of a larger work in source and binary forms,
> > with or without modification, provided that the following conditions
> > are met:
[snip]
> I'm a bit concerned about the word "non-transferable" and the fact
> that the license may grant permission to modify and/or distribute
> to Doug Lea but not to third parties like Debian or even me as an
> individual.
Your analysis is correct. Unfortunately, this means that the license
fails DFSG 7 ("Distribution of License"). A shame, because it otherwise
looked DSFG-free (pretty much the BSD license, though that bit about
affirming non-usage in nuclear facilities gave me a little pause).
> Do I need to get further clairification from Sun about this?
Yes.
> The package will already be going into contrib because several of the
> classes depending on the Java2 Container API. I just don't want it
> to be relegated to non-free (I'll remove the offending files before
> doing that).
Unfortunately, unless you can get Sun to extend a transferrable license,
you'll either have to remove the files or move the package to non-free.
> Anyway, thanks in advance for your advice!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
--
G. Branden Robinson | You could wire up a dead rat to a
Debian GNU/Linux | DIMM socket and the PC BIOS memory
branden@debian.org | test would pass it just fine.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Ethan Benson
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