Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Peter Palfrader <weasel@debian.org> writes:
> On Wed, 06 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote:
>
>> Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> writes:
>>
>> > Kevin Atkinson <kevin@atkinson.dhs.org> wrote:
>> >> This is NOT a clear case of 'something being not freely licensed'.
>> >>
>> >> 1) The exact license of the DEC word list is not clear.
>> >
>> > and then later in the DEC description
>> >
>> >> (NON-)COPYRIGHT STATUS
>> >>
>> >> To the best of my knowledge, all the files I used to build these
>> >> wordlists were available for public distribution and use, at least
>> >> for non-commercial purposes. I have confirmed this assumption with
>> >> the authors of the lists, whenever they were known.
>> >>
>> >> Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package
>> >> can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for
>> >> personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in
>> >> commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or
>> >> the authors of the original lists.)
>> >
>> > which is clearly not a free license.
>>
>> No, that's not the point.
>
> IMHO this is exactly the point.
Why did you snip the rest of my explanation? As I said, that statement
is *not* a license. The DEC word list has no license. It doesn't have
any known copyright either. It just exists, and is used in several
supposedly free word lists.
The only issue Debian has with distributing the DEC word list is
possible infringement of a copyright that we don't know even exists.
And, if that's truly something to worry about, I'm sure there are many
other packages that could possible infringe on some copyright. Unless a
copyright holder notices and claims infringement, how could we possibly
know?
--
People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
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