Re: NASA CDF
* Teemu Ikonen <tpikonen@gmail.com> [101212 20:15]:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Bernhard R. Link <brlink@debian.org> wrote:
> > * Aaron M. Ucko <amu@alum.mit.edu> [101210 20:36]:
> >> > The conclusion I draw from the threads above is that the license above
> >> > is DFSG-free.
> >>
> >> I agree with you, but also with those who observed that the notion of a
> >> federal agency holding copyright is a bit odd; published US government
> >> work falls into the public domain
> >
> > Only in the US. They still own the copyright for the rest of the world.
> > (And then I think they can buy stuff not produced by themselves and that
> > is not even public domain in the US).
>
> Speculations on the copyright status of US government works outside of
> US aside, would "can be incorporated into any other substantive
> product with or without modifications for profit or non-profit" (as
> stated in the license) qualify as DFSG-free?
I think it depends. Forbiding to sell it on its own is quite a stupid clause
(if it may be sold together with something, forbiding sale alone is at
most understandable when thinking in a pre-internet world).
The question is: Is it harmfull. I'm too lazy to look for example, but
AFAIR there are precedents for allowing things like this if they are not
harmfull, i.e. if they are easily circumventable and cause no direct
problems.
I think "his software may be copied or redistributed as long as it is
not sold for profit" means that copying and restributing it commercially
is no problem when not charging money for this softare.
So some buisiness having a public debian mirror and someone downloading
only that package from it looks like no problem.
I guess the biggest concern is Debian CD/DVDs. If selling a Debian
CD/DVD with this software is no problem - even if there is no other software
using or containing this library on this media but only many other Debian
packages - then I guess it is not actually harmful.
If "incorporating" state is not reached by mere aggregation with
other software, then this would be a problem. This is a question you'll
need at least an native English speaker or perhaps a lawyer to answer.
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