Re: Inclusion of PDF with CC Attr 3.0 license

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Rafael Laboissière writes ("Inclusion of PDF with CC Attr 3.0 license"):
> [Please, Cc to me, since I am not subscribed to debian-legal.]
> 
> I am considering to package Divand [1], an add-on package for Octave. The 
> current upstream tarball [2] contains a PDF file [3] with the following 
> copyright and licensing conditions: "© Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 
> License."
> 
> Would it be okay to include this file in the Debian package?

AFAICT this PDF is a scientific paper.  The source code (typesetter
input file or whatever) is not provided, and while modifying it would
be permitted by the CC-BY copyright licence, it would be awkward using
just the PDF.

My personal view is that there would be no problem shipping the PDF,
even though Debian's users would have no practical ability to modify
this PDF.  Making a modified version of a scientific paper like this
one is neither useful, nor, unless especial care is taken, ethical.
Our users would be better served by getting a copy of the paper than
by having you remove it.

But Debian has taken the view that even documents like this one must
be fully free, and even removed from the source package.  So you will
need to strip it out of the source package and make a "dfsg" orig
tarball.

Sorry.  I think this is daft.  Debian does at least permit you to
include a link to somewhere else the paper may be found.

Regards,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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