Re: How to proceed with an ITP of questionably licensed software?
<posted & mailed>
Andrew Pollock wrote:
> [[ Please CC me on all correspondence, I'm not subscribed ]]
>
> Hi,
>
> I've filed an ITP (WNPP #252999) on some software that is licensed under
> the GPL.
>
> The source does not contain anything like a COPYING or LICENSE file or
> anything where the author asserts copyright over the work, or states that
> it's licensed under the GPL (but Freshmeat says it is) and there is a copy
> of the GPL included in the source tarball, in a file called GPL.
ecncheck/firedns/README contains a copyright assertion and licensing
statement, albeit a sloppy one. That presumably applies only to the
firedns subdir, though.
There's a similar notice in ecncheck/firestring/README.
The rest of ecncheck, unfortunately, has no such notice.
> I've emailed the author and asked if he could add such assertions to a
> subsequent release of the software, but to date I have not received a
> reply.
>
> What should I do at this point? Abort packaging the software?
Until you can get a proper copyright/licensing statement from the author,
yeah. The fact that *parts* of it are licensed by him really means that he
ought to be willing to license the rest of it....
> Cobble
> together a debian/copyright file from non-existent information and upload?
>
> regards
>
> Andrew
--
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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