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need help with openscad's license



hello debian-legal,

as a part of my intent to package openscad (#583476), i want to ask you
for help with the package's licensing.

as outlined in the itp, the package is gpl-2+ itself and depends heavily
on libcgal, which is qpl and thus in non-free, which sends openscad to
contrib. openscad has a cgal exception on its license, and some time ago
i contacted its only gpl dependency's author, who re-licensed his
library to gpl-2+ with cgal exception too.

so far, so good.

now there is a very particular file in the openscad library,
src/OGL_helper.h. it is derived from an OGL_helper.h in cgal, which is
qpl licensed. i don't think that could bring anyone in trouble (qpl is
ok with being modified and linked against, and whoever brings gpl into
the end result had to agree to use parts of cgal anyway), but it's hard
to represent in the debian package.

i've come up with various ways, of which i'm not sure which will work or
which of the working is best:

* upstream author

  both the openscad author and i have tried to contact the author of the
  original OGL_helper.h file. if he agreed to dual-license it qpl and
  gpl, we'd all be fine. the modified version could stay in openscad,
  and there would be much rejoycing.

* technical solution

  if the modifications could be split out from OGL_helper.h by means of
  c++, we would still link against the qpl version statically, but we
  wouldn't have to ship qpl source code in openscad and could rely on it
  being provided by the non-free build dependency.

  if it was trivial, the openscad authors would already have done it,
  and my c++ fu is not strong enough for such a task.

now for the less elegant solutions...

* a patch

  the debian package could contain a patch against the cgal version.
  that would be more or less equivalent to the technical solution, but
  far less elegant; plus, i wouldn't dare to judge the license situation
  of the resulting intermediate file that gets created on the build
  server.

* declaring openscad nonfree

  we ship the qpl file, we are non-free. problem solved.


i am still working on the version of the package that is to be released
as 2011.12-1, a preliminary version of the copyright file is attached.
the other FIXME it contains (contrib/OpenSCAD.xml) will, as i hope, be
resolved by the file's author (who is active on the project's mailing
list).


do you know any other way out, or have other suggestions on how to solve
that?

regards
chrysn

-- 
I shouldn't have written all those tank programs.
  -- Kevin Flynn
Format: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/dep/web/deps/dep5.mdwn?revision=174
Upstream-Name: opencsg
Source: http://opencsg.org/

Files: *
Copyright: © 2009-2011 Clifford Wolf <clifford@clifford.at>, Marius Kintel <marius@kintel.net>
License: GPL-2+ with CGAL exception

Files: src/OGL_helper.h
Copyright: © 1997-2002 Max-Planck-Institute Saarbruecken (Germany)
License: QPL
FIXME: original author has been contacted for gpl dual-licensing (this contains patches for openscad)

Files: src/cache.h
Copyright: © 2009-2011 Clifford Wolf <clifford@clifford.at>, Marius Kintel <marius@kintel.net>, 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies)
License: QtCommercial or LGPL-2.1 with some exception or GPL-3

Files: scripts/googlecode_upload.py
Copyright: 2006-2007 Google Inc.
License: Apache

Files: contrib/scad.el
Copyright: 2010-2011 Len Trigg <lenbok@gmail.com>
License: GPL-2+

Files: contrib/OpenSCAD.xml
Copyright: 2011 tjhowse <tjhowse@gmail.com>
License: FIXME
 check this

Files: tests/lodepng.*
Copyright: 2005-2011 Lode Vandevenne
License:
 This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
 warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
 arising from the use of this software.
 .
 Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
 including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
 freely, subject to the following restrictions:
 .
     1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
     claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
     in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
     appreciated but is not required.
 .
     2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
     misrepresented as being the original software.
 .
     3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source
     distribution.

File: tests/OffscreenContextGLX.cc
Copyright: 1999-2001 Brian Paul
License: X11

File: tests/test_pretty_print.py
Copyright: 2011 Don Bright <hugh.m.bright@gmail.com>
License: GPL-2+

Files: debian/*
Copyright: © 2010-2011 Christian M. Amsüss <chrysn@fsfe.org>
License: GPL-2+ with CGAL exception

License: GPL-2+ with CGAL exception
 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
 Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
 any later version.
 .
 As a special exception, you have permission to link this program
 with the CGAL library and distribute executables, as long as you
 follow the requirements of the GNU GPL in regard to all of the
 software in the executable aside from CGAL.
 .
 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for
 more details.
 .
 A copy of the GNU General Public License can be found in
 /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.

License: QPL
 FIXME: we can't ship this in this tarball anyway w/o making it nonfree

License: Apache
 Licensed under the terms of the Apache Software License 2.0:
 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 .
 A copy of the Apache 2.0 License can be found in
 /usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0.

License: X11
 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
 copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
 to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
 the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
 and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
 Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 .
 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
 in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 .
 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL
 BRIAN PAUL BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
 AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
 CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

License: QtCommercial
 Licensees holding valid Qt Commercial licenses may use this file in
 accordance with the Qt Commercial License Agreement provided with the
 Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in
 a written agreement between you and Nokia.
Comment: This license is non-free, but only used in dual-licensing with free
 licenses.

License: LGPL-2.1 with some exception
 Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser
 General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software
 Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the
 packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to
 ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements
 will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.
 .
 In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain additional
 rights.  These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception
 version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package.
FIXME: The LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt is not shipped upstream. As it only affects
 "certain rights" (which we don't need), no further action was taken to
 determine what it is about exactly.

License: GPL-3
 Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU
 General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software
 Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the
 packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to
 ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be
 met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
 .
 A copy of the GNU General Public License can be found in
 /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3.

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