Re: Swiss Ephemeris astronomy library forgoes non-DFSG license in favour of GPL
On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
Hello. I'm not currently a member of the list, so please CC me.
Me too.
As per the public announcement archived at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/swisseph/message/1918 the current
version 1.74 of the Swiss Ephemeris astronomy library has been
released under a dual-licensing scheme, with the "GPL 2 or later"
being the DFSG-compatible open source license.
Previously (until version 1.73) they used a non-DFSG compatible
license, the Swiss Ephemeris Public License (see
http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#head-1ee6c9e79e063c30e134ca02bff7af1bd5bbcef1
) as the "open-source" license. But after months of my humble effort
(mostly consisting of repeated mails to their mailing list but nothing
more than that), they have now switched to the GPL.
Good job! Thanks.
This list has previously helped me regarding what licensing policy to
suggest to them etc, so I felt I should echo their announcement here
and say thanks for all those who helped me.
Special Note to Shri Jaldhar Vyas, who according to
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/10/msg00286.html was the
person who first wanted to Debianise Swisseph and brought the
DFSG-incompatibility of their license to light: Please now make
appropriate arrangements for the speedy debianization of the now
DFSG-compatible Swiss Ephemeris library. (I am unable to help in this
as I am not sufficiently technically competent.)
I still have my old packaging. I need to make sure it is uptodate
with regards to policy before I can upload it.
Also my package includes the ephemeris data for 1800AD-2200AD. It just
occured to me that this may or may not be covered under the new license.
Can you check with the authors? The package will work if I omit these
files but obviously it will be more useful if users don't have to download
and install them themselves.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/
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