Re: LiDIA's statement of GPL only in mailing list archives

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

"Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso" <jordigh@gmail.com> writes:

> When pressed, they responded that the mention of GPL license in the
> mailing list should suffice:
>
>     http://www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/pipermail/lidia/2007-April/001150.html
>
> Is this good enough for Debian? A mailing list announcement that all
> of LiDIA's source tree is available under the GPL?

There is plenty of precedent for this in existing packages in
Debian. You need some clear statement from the copyright holder,
explicitly granting license to all recipients for that particular
software under the specific license terms.

An email has been judged sufficient for many Debian packages, if it
unambiguously specifies all of the above, and is clearly from the
copyright holder. Copy and paste into the 'debian/copyright' file the
part of the message that has all that information, along with that
message's 'date', 'from', 'message-id' fields.

Better would be to encourage the copyright holder to place such
permission *in* the software, with the copyright statement, so that
it's clear that it refers to that software and is granted to all
recipients.

-- 
 \                           "Holy polar ice sheet, Batman!"  -- Robin |
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_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney