Re: RFS: spim
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@gmail.com> writes:
>> The license is as follows:
>> You may make copies of SPIM for your own use and modify those copies.
>>
>> All copies of SPIM must retain my name and copyright notice.
>>
>> You may not sell SPIM or distribute SPIM in conjunction with a
>> commercial product or service without the expressed written consent of
>> James Larus.
>
> This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the
> copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this in
> ‘non-free’?
>
> If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright
> restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work at
> all.
Looks like a Debian person contacted him about this a long time ago:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyright
IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
Debian to rely on it.
I'd suggest that upstream should provide a clear statement for
debian/copyright that Debian (and Ubuntu) is allowed to distribute
spim. It is a shame he refuses to change the license to something free
(as mentioned on IRC). If he has a PGP/GPG key to clearsign the
statement with, that would be good too.
--
bye,
pabs
http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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