Re: Help needed for bug 507579 (AGPL issue).

[Walter Landry <wlandry@caltech.edu>]

Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> wrote:
> Dear debian-legal,
> 
> yocto-reader is a package licenced under the AGPL, and due to the novelties of
> this license there is divergence of interpretation on wether this package is
> fit for the release or not.
> 
> Can you have a look to http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=507579
> and help to resolve the issue?
> 
> The bug is quite short so I hope there is no need to make a summary. The main
> issues are:
> 
>  - Wether the Debian package is a modification of upstream work that fails to
>    provide access to the diff and the build environment.

Upstream is also the Debian maintainer.  So the question of whether
Debian is modifying the code is sufficiently fuzzy that I do not feel
comfortable saying anything definite.  If someone else takes over
maintenance (e.g. QA), then they would have more work on their hands.

>  - Wether it is acceptable to have html pages that include a link to a remote
>    non-free Google javascript.

If I understand correctly, the Google javascript is required in order
for the page to work properly.  In Debian parlance, this means that
yocto-reader depends on the Google javascript.  So at a minimum
yocto-reader would have to go into contrib.

Now, it also seems like the Google javascript implements an API that
yocto-reader uses.  This makes the javascript more like a library, and
the AGPL requires the source of all of the libraries that it uses.

In summary, I am unsure about the first point, but I agree with
Florian Weimer about the second point.  Unfortunately, this means that
the code can not be packaged unless it is relicensed.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry@caltech.edu