Re: RFC: the new license for IBPP

[Damyan Ivanov <divanov@creditreform.bg>]

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Josh Triplett wrote:
> Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> 
>>======= The problematic? clause ===============
>>Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or
>>organization (”You”) obtaining a copy of this software and associated
>>documentation files covered by this license (the “Software”) to use
>>the Software as part of another work; to modify it for that purpose;
>>to publish or distribute it, modified or not, for that same purpose;
>>to permit persons to whom the other work using the Software is
>>furnished to do so; subject to the following conditions: the above
>>copyright notice and this complete and unmodified permission notice
>>shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
>>Software; You will not misrepresent modified versions of the Software
>>as being the original.
>>===============================================
>>Francesco Poli wrote:
>>
>>>What if I want to modify the library itself and distribute the result by
>>>itself?
>>
>>This is not permitted, AFAIU.
>>
>>>Why have I to be annoyed by this "wrap it in some silly container work"
>>>requirement?
>>>
>>>Better to adopt the actual Expat license
>>>(http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt), IMHO.
>>
>>I see your point and I agree. But the author deliberately modified
>>Expat license to include the above terms.
>>
>>So the questions is: "Is this DFSG-free or not?" Please bear in mind
>>that IBPP is really to be used in FlameRobin's packaging, not by itself.
> 
> That particular point, that you only plan to use it with one particular
> piece of software, has no bearing on DFSG-freeness.

I guess my explaination was not clear enough. I follow this re-licensing
effort for so long that I tend to omit the details. Sorry.

IBPP is released only as source (i.e. a set of C++ classes, no .so, no
library). FlameRobin incorporates this released source in its source
tree. So we are talking about packaging FlameRobin, which source
contains some files licensed under the above terms. The rest of
FlameRobin is (soon to be) licensed under unmodified Expat license. And
I don't plan to package IBPP in separate package, but only
flamerobin.deb (with part of the .orig.tar.gz using tha above license)

I am not sure if this makes a difference...

> This license itself seems highly suboptimal, but it *may* follow the
> letter of the DFSG:
> 
>>The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
>>selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
>>software distribution containing programs from several different
>>sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such
>>sale.
> 
> "as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing
> programs from several different sources" does indeed permit pieces of
> software which do not permit solo distribution, since you can always
> bundle them with a hello world program to make them distributable.
> (This also makes such licensing relatively worthless.)
> 
> One question however: does the author intend "use the Software as part
> of another work" to imply that the work must incorporate or derive from
> the Software, or simply that the Software must occur as part of a larger
> work of some kind, including potentially an aggregate with unrelated
> programs, such as the Debian distribution?  The latter follows the
> letter of the DFSG; the former places a stronger requirement that I
> don't believe the DFSG permits.

I beleive that something like FlameRobin is sought. (i.e. the former).
And this is exactly the context of using the IBPP - as an integral part
of another software. I beleive this is not a problem, since the
FlameRobin package would satisfy both licensing (original Expath and
this modified thingy - the IBPP license) and the Social contract. I
mention SC, because of this text: "We promise that the Debian system and
all its components will be free according to these guidelines.". If we
take "components" to be equal to "packages" then I beleive[1] the
FlameRobin package fits in SC and DFSG.


Friendly,
dam
- --
Damyan Ivanov                              Creditreform Bulgaria
divanov@creditreform.bg              http://www.creditreform.bg/
phone: +359(2)928-2611, 929-3993            fax: +359(2)920-0994
mob. +359(88)856-6067               dam@jabber.minus273.org/Gaim
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