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Re: Bug#639916: spread: license wackiness



On Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:50:27 +0100 Andrew Suffield wrote:

> Package: spread
> Severity: serious
> 
> "3. All advertising materials (including web pages) mentioning
>  features or use of this software, or software that uses this software,
>  must display the following acknowledgment: "This product uses software
>  developed by Spread Concepts LLC for use in the Spread toolkit. For
>  more information about Spread see http://www.spread.org"";
> 
> Seriously?

Seriously what?
I am not sure I understand what you mean: could you please elaborate?

What you quoted looks like an Obnoxious Advertising Clause (OAC), a
GPL-incompatible restriction, but one that has traditionally been
accepted by the Debian Project as compliant with the DFSG (even though
recommended against), AFAICT.

I took an ultra-quick glance at the full license text
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/s/spread/spread_3.17.4-2/spread.copyright
and I noticed a choice of venue clause (with venue fixed in the courts
of the State of Maryland, USA).
As it is well-known, choice of venue clauses have been discussed to
death here on debian-legal, with opposing opinions expressed by a lot
of different people.
My own personal take on the matter is that such clauses are non-free
restrictions, since they may force licensees to sustain unreasonable
costs due to long distance travels.

> 
> For -legal: consider this page:
> http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/spread

What should I consider, more precisely?

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