Bug#323533: DCC is non-free
Package: dcc
Severity: serious
First (of course) IANAL. And I could be entirely wrong (I hope so).
It is my understanding that DCC (Distributed Checksum Clearinghouses)
is not free because of patent issues. According to the license at
http://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/dcc-tree/LICENSE:
* This agreement is not applicable to any entity which sells anti-spam
* solutions to others or provides an anti-spam solution as part of a
* security solution sold to other entities, or to a private network
* which employs the DCC or uses data provided by operation of the DCC
* but does not provide corresponding data to other users.
Furthermore:
* Parties not eligible to receive a license under this agreement can
* obtain a commercial license to use DCC and permission to use
* U.S. Patent 6,330,590 by contacting Commtouch at http://www.commtouch.com/
* or by email to nospam@commtouch.com.
I imagine past versions of DCC do not have this clause in their
license; however, they probably still infringe on the patent (which I
haven't read, not do I intend on reading), and still can not be
distributed in concordance with the DFSG.
Is this correct? Does DCC need to be removed from Debian?
--
Duncan Findlay
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