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Re: infos about alien licenses



On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 06:12:59AM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
> >>The TwistedSNMP-0.3.13/license.txt reads:
> >>THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ANY
> >>SITUATION ENDANGERING HUMAN LIFE OR PROPERTY.
> > This is possibly problematic, depending on how you define "should".  I'd
> > take it as just being a restatement of the whole "no warranty, if it breaks
> > you get to keep both pieces" thing,
> 
> Yeah. Interestingly (as a side-note), I have read something like this
> before. It's in the Windows License concerning the use of Sun's Java. I
> think it means something like: "If you use this to steer an airplane and
> that crashes, don't blame us - we warned you". Not very reassuring IMHO.

Practically, though, that's no less than you get with every other piece of
software -- free or otherwise.

> > but it could be read as forbidding use
> > in the mentioned areas.
> 
> ... which would be against the policy, right?

Yes, it would discriminate against fields of endeavour, and hence fail
DFSG #<mumble>.

> Hmmm. I wonder if that
> still could be packaged, and where to - contrib? non-free? The latter, I
> suppose?

If it doesn't pass the DFSG (but we can legally distribute it), then it goes
in non-free.  If it depends on non-free stuff, but is itself free, then it
goes in contrib.  So twisted-snmp would go in non-free, and the dependent
application would go in contrib.

I don't think that the clause is necessarily a problem, though -- it reads
to me more like a slightly more emphatic no-warranty clause, rather than a
prohibition against use in any particular field.

> > As an aside, I've got packages of python-sybase floating around here
> > somewhere.  I never uploaded them to Debian because I have no interest in
> > maintaining them long-term, I just whipped them up for a client one day.  I
> > can send them to you if you'd like (and possibly sponsor them into Debian if
> > you want to maintain it yourself).
> 
> That would be cool. Thanks for your kind offer.

http://www.hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/tmp/python-sybase_0.37*

I don't guarantee a stellar packaging job -- it was a quick whipup for a
client.  It's not egregiously defective, though.

- Matt



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