Re: Is distribution of the maxdb-doc package a GPL violation?

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Guido Trotter <ultrotter@debian.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I've been asked by the debian release team to look into this bug and see what
> can be done to have a successful resolution... The situation seems to be this
> one:
> 
> 1) maxdb-doc is a package which contains some GPL licensed html manual files
> 2) the GPL asks for the source code (defined as: "preferred form of
> the work for making modifications to it") to be available
> 3) the html files are determined to be automatically generated by a
> tool called "SAP Html Export", and the files which originate them
> are not available
> 
> This seems to be a problem only because the GPL is used... Would the
> files be under a less restrictive licence we would be perfectly OK
> distributing them as is...

Sort of.  Debian requires source for everything that it distributes in
main.  If it were not GPL'd, it would still have to go into non-free.

> I'm addressing this mail to the debian-legal list too for a
> consultation about whether they think this package is distributable
> at all or not as is, and what would they recommend...

As is, it is not distributable.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu