Hi,The Ghostscript project includes some so-called "CMap" files contributed by Adobe, which until recently was shipped with a non-free license allowing only redistribution:
Permission is granted for redistribution of this file provided this copyright notice is maintained intact and that the contents of this file are not altered in any way from its original form.
Consequently Ghostscript in Debian have shipped without those CMap files, hurting (as I understand it) handling of multibyte fonts.
September 25 CMap files was updated in Ghostscript Subversion, with the following license:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materialsprovided with the distribution.
Commit message indicates that Ghostscript project interpret the new license as allowing modifications. I would like to have the legal teams opinion on whether this new license is acceptable for the Debian project. I am especially concerned about the the initial limitations: do "use" in source form mean we are allowed only to compile the virgin code or does that also allow us to derive and compile something else?
Kind regards, - Jonas co-maintainer of Ghostscript for DebianPlease cc me personally on responses, as I am not subscribed to the list.
- Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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