Re: [EMBOSS] Files included in EMBOSS but licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
On 28/07/2011 15:38, Charles Plessy wrote:
Dear EMBOSS developers,
(CC Debian Med mailing list)
while working on upgrading Debian's emboss package to version 6.4.0
(congratulations, by the way), I found some files in EMBOSS that are
not considered ‘Free software’ by Debian. They were actually present
in past releases as well.
Their license is Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND
3.0), and it disallows modification of the files. The presence of these files
in EMBOSS makes it impossible for Debian to redistribute it in our operating
system. I have confirmed with the UniProt consortium's helpdesk that, even in
isolation, these files are covered by the CC BY-ND license. I see three
possible solutions.
Ummm .... in what sense would *you* be modifying the files?
UniProt's license http://www.uniprot.org/help/license says
License & disclaimer
License
We have chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License to all copyrightable parts of our databases. This means that you are free to copy, distribute, display and make commercial use of these databases in all legislations, provided you give us credit. However, if you intend to distribute a modified version of one of our databases, you must ask us for permission first.
So I see no problem for EMBOSS in including the files.
The only problem is for someone "modifying the files and redistributing
them" without permission ... but strictly that would not apply to most
uses of a UniProt entry (otherwise you could not use one entry as input
and distribute the results).
The licensing is there to prevent redistribution of UniProt without
permission.
Anyway, you can just delete them from the Debian duistribution of EMBOSS
- and find your own way to run the QA tests. I don't think we have a
problem.
regards,
Peter Rice
EMBOSS Team
regards,
Peter Rice
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