Re: How to use (free!) sources of other projects without copyright/license information in file?
Hello again Michael !
First of all, thanks again very much for all your support and help.
On Fri, 2011-05-13 at 22:35 +0100, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> Dear debian-legal,
>
> While reviewing the ax_emergency_listen package [1] I found that several source
> files lack both copyright and license information. The reason for this lack,
> however, is that they were taken verbatim from ax25-apps *where there is no such
> information in source files*, as upstream explained to me (Guido, CC'ed) in
> private.
>
> Both of the packages claim to be GPL'ed as per COPYING, and I wonder whether
> this is acceptable for Debian. Probably it is, as ax25-apps is in main.
>
> But how would one, in this case, trace back the origin of those files?
I'll just make an hypotesis. The origin is not very important as long as
the original author doesn't care about claiming it. Being GNU GPL (this
is clearly stated in COPYRIGHT), there is no warranty in any case. If
there is no warranty, then as long as no-one is claiming the copyright,
it shouldn't matter (for example, "orphan package").
In this specific case, there is some (possibly incomplete) authorship
information in the original "listen" package. As long as I refer to the
original package, stating clearly its origin (for example it's web
location and name), it is always possible to trace back whatever
information the original author wants to provide (in the original source
package). If such information is missing or incomplete at the origin it
is a matter of the author of that package.
Just an hypothesis or "guess".
> Thanks a lot in advance,
> Michael
You are welcome !
> PS.: Please keep Guido and me CC'ed, neither of us is subscribed.
>
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2011/05/msg00020.html
Kind regards,
Guido
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