Re: Geant4 Software License, version 1.0

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* MJ Ray:

> Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU>
>> I would be interested to hear your opinions on the Geant4 Software 
>> License, version 1.0 [1]. [...]
>> [1] http://geant4.web.cern.ch/geant4/license/LICENSE.html
>
> I think it is clearly GPL-incompatible (as you noted) for reasons
> similar to the old BSD licence and it might not follow the DFSG because
> of clauses 4 (automatic donation to upstream),

I think you are misreading the clause.  It's not a donation of the
modified code base.  You retain your exploitation rights, you only
grant upstream a free license.  This is just a form of copyleft, only
that the source license is granted to upstream, not the party that
receives the code.

> maybe 5 (discrimination against fields of use) below.

Debian should not protect the freedom to file software patents.  If
the DFSG required this, we would have to change them.