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Bug#270461: lincvs: No free license & misleading copyright file



Package: lincvs
Version: 1.3.2-3
Severity: serious

The copyright file for lincvs claims:

| Copyright: (c) 1999-2003 by above named authors.
|
| This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
| it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
| the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
| any later version.

However, the copyright notice in the upstream source's LICENSE file reads

| LinCVS is available under two different licenses:
|
| If LinCVS is linked against the GPLed version of Qt 
| LinCVS is released under the terms of GPL also.
|
| If LinCVS is linked against a nonGPLed version of Qt 
| LinCVS is released under the terms of the 
| LinCVS License for non-Unix platforms (LLNU)

This language is also found in most of the actual source files, except
for the files

  src/AnnotateGrepLinesDialog.ui
  src/ccvscommand.h
  src/ccvscommand.cpp
  src/MergeDialog.ui
  src/AnnotateGrepLineDialog.ui
  src/cmainwindow.ui

which contain ordinary GPL notices.

The notice in the LICENSE file specifies a non-free license. GPL is
usually free, but when, as here, it is applied only under the
condition that one links with (a certain version of Qt) it is not
free. The restriction means that I cannot take the lincvs code nd
modify it such that it does not use Qt anymore - I would find myself
without any applicable license at all.

Furthermore, such a restricted GPL grant is incompatible with the raw
GPL-ness of src/AnnotateGrepLinesDialog.ui et al.


What the upstream author probably *meant* is something along the lines
of

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 or (at your option)
   any later version; or (at your option) under the terms of the
   LinCVS License for non-Unix platforms (LLNU) which is reproduced
   below.

   The two license options give you slightly different rights under
   slightly different conditions; you can choose the one that suits
   your purpose best.

   If you redistribute a modified version of LinCVS, you have the
   option of using either of the license options, or to preserve
   the dual licensing. Beware that if you choose to redistribute
   under only one of the license options, your recipients will not be
   able to link with either the free or the commercial editions of Qt.

This would be DFSG free, but what the authors actually *did* is not.


To solve this problem, the Debian maintainer should contact the
upstream authors and ask them whether they would agree to an ordinary
dual licensing scheme like the one sketched above. If they do, this
bug report can be closed once evidence of their agreement reaches the
copyright file. If an agreement with the authors cannot be reached,
the package will have to move to non-free.

-- 
Henning Makholm                      "Underlige Ugle vågner midt om natten."



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