On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:10:27 +0200 Klaus Reimer wrote: > Hello, Hi! [...] > On 09/13/2011 04:11 PM, Sam Geeraerts wrote: > > These terms are incompatible with the GPL and in violation of DFSG. Indeed: forbidding commercial use/distribution and forbidding modifications is definitely GPL-incompatible and clearly fails to comply with the DFSG. Thanks to Sam for taking this issue seriously and for kindly reporting it. > > If they are > > correct then arc should be removed from Debian. If they are not correct then > > those files should be updated. I couldn't find a statement or discussion about > > a license change to GPL on the Web. > > This was done through E-Mail. I contacted Thom Henderson (The original > author of MS DOS arc) in 2003 and asked him about putting arc under a > free license. His reply was "Do whatever you like. I don't care". Then I > contacted Howard Chu (The maintainer of the Unix version of arc) and he > decided to put it under the GPL. Together we (Howard and I) created the > arc project on Sourceforge, Howard uploaded the original sources of the > Unix version of arc and we added a COPYING file (GPL license) and a > LICENSE file which describes the license change. This is really appreciated: liberating a piece of software is always a good thing to do! Thanks to you (Klaus) for doing so. > The comments in the > original source files were never changed. This is the problematic part: as it is now, it seems to be fairly confusing and misleading. > > Keep in mind that arc is a historical project which is no longer > actively developed for more than a decade. It is "preserved" on > SourceForge. I (as some kind of a co-author) try to keep it running and > have fixed some compilation issues in the last years. In my opinion arc > may still be useful for some people who are still running old dial-up > mailboxes on a modern Debian system. Personally I no longer use it. So > if someone more important than me (And I guess that's everyone in the > Debian Project) thinks the package should be removed then I have no > strong objections. I am not more important than you in the Debian Project (hey! I am not even a DD or a DM, even though I co-maintain one package...). Anyway, I don't think that a package should be removed from Debian (main), just because its copyright and licensing status is *documented* in a confusing and unclear way. I mean: as long as it's true that the work has been re-licensed in a DFSG-free manner (under the GNU GPL, in the present case), the work is Free Software. However, all those scary notices forbidding things that are scattered here and there should really be fixed. > > I could easily add an additional comment to the top of all source files > pointing readers to the LICENSE file which describes the license change. > But if this is not enough and I had to edit all existing comments which > mention outdated licensing information then I may consider removing this > old package instead. Any advice? I would strongly recommend fixing all existing comments which mention obsolete licensing terms and placing the short copyright and permission notice suggested by the GPL near the top of each source file. If this looks like too much effort, you could consider doing it gradually: (A) you start by placing a clear central file that describes the history of the re-licensing (do I understand correctly that this has already been done?) (B) then you pick some files and replace the outdated licensing terms with the GPL copyright and permission notice (C) whenever you have some spare time, you repeat (B) for some other files, until everything has been fixed I guess the whole process will take less time than you think. I hope this helps. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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