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Re: Third party code license issue



"Medhamsh" <me@medhamsh.org> writes:

> The upstream of adminer released it under Apache-2.0 but this third
> party code has the Expat license text and after that another one-liner
> which reads,
>
> “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.”

This violates the DFSG §6. By declaring some fields of endeavour
off-limits, the licensor is not granting the freedoms required for all
Debian users.

As Paul Wise refers to in a linkes article, the clause is uselessly
vague and creates the effect that the recipient *can't know* whether
what they are doing is copyright violation. It's needlessly adding
confusion to an already confused issue.

> The author is not willing to change that line. I want to have the
> advice regarding this issue.

The best advice, given the refusal of JSmin upstream to change to a
clearly free license, is to drop the dependency on JSmin. Ideally, work
with your upstream to make the work fully functional without that
library.

-- 
 \        “Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so |
  `\     why should they care about it?” —Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG, 2006 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney


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