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Bug#431883: dcraw license does not give permission to distribute modified versions or source alongside



Package: dcraw
Version: 7.02-1
Severity: serious

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007, Steve King wrote:
> However I would appreciate it if the assembled masses of legal
> experts could confirm that they agree that this is the case.

There's actually an even more fundamental problem with dcraw.c:

/*
   dcraw.c -- Dave Coffin's raw photo decoder
   Copyright 1997-2007 by Dave Coffin, dcoffin a cybercom o net

   This is a command-line ANSI C program to convert raw photos from
   any digital camera on any computer running any operating system.

   No license is required to download and use dcraw.c.  However,
   to lawfully redistribute this code, you must either (a) include
   full source code* for all executable files containing RESTRICTED
   functions, (b) remove all RESTRICTED functions, re-implement them,
   or copy them from an earlier, unrestricted Revision of dcraw.c,
   or (c) purchase a license from the author.

   The functions that process Foveon images have been RESTRICTED
   since Revision 1.237.  All other code remains free for all uses.

   *If you have not modified dcraw.c in any way, a link to my
   homepage qualifies as "full source code".

   $Revision: 1.387 $
   $Date: 2007/06/24 00:18:52 $
 */


You'll notice that we have no permission to distribute modified
versions of dcraw.c as required by the DFSG. Secondly, it appears that
we must include full source code if we've modified dcraw.c, but we
don't do that. We distribute source alongside.

If you could get Dave Coffin to explicitely dual license under the
GPL, that'd clarify this entire problem. [He seems to want a copyleft,
which the GPL would grant.]

Text like:

Alternately, you can redistribute and/or modify this work under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

would do the trick.


Don Armstrong

-- 
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something.
 -- Steven Wright

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu



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