On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 04:39:45 +1100 Ben Finney wrote: > Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes: > > > 3. Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain > > complete source code for TORQUE and any modifications and/or additions to > > TORQUE. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available > > for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and all modifications and > > additions to the Software must be freely redistributable by any party (including > > Licensor) without restriction. > > I missed this clause. This appears to be a custom-written attempt to > turn a BSD-style license into a copyleft. The effectiveness of this is > unknown until it's been examined properly by a copyright lawyer. Hello Ben, thanks for analyzing this license (again). I don't know whether this clause can be really called an attempt to implement a copyleft. It seems to impose that all modifications and additions be licensed under all-permissive terms. In other words, it seems to force modifiers to grant far more permissions over their modifications than what is granted by the original authors over the original work. I think this fails to meet (the second part of) DFSG#3. Moreover, since the Torque is a derivative work of OpenPBS v2.3, the license of which included a similar clause, it seems to me that distributing Torque violates the license of OpenPBS v2.3. Unless all the parts of Torque that differs from OpenPBS v2.3 are licensed under all-permissive terms, which does not seem to be the case... Frankly speaking I cannot understand how Torque managed to be accepted in Debian main... For more details, please re-read the short thread where this issue was discussed last time: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/01/msg00030.html > > Far better would be for the copyright holder to license this work under > well-known license terms understood to be an effective copyleft, like > the GNU GPL <URL:https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. I agree with your recommendation: the GNU GPL is a far better choice, whenever a copyleft license is desired. My personal preference goes to the GNU GPL v2: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt I hope this helps to solve this licensing mess once and for all. -- 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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