E-Petition to free PhyLip - please sign (Re: Report from Debian Med sprint)
--> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/Meeting/Southport2012/ePetition_Phylip
Hi Tim,
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 05:47:11PM +0000, Tim Booth wrote:
> > 11) License checking
> > I was suggesting an ePetition to free Phylip and wrote a first draft
> > for it[6]
>
> I put my name to this already and also fixed a couple of typos in the
> text.
Great - I was hoping for such fixes!
> Since you said this is a draft I also made some changes - take them or
> revert them as you like...
I always love if people fix my bugs - no need to reintroduce them. :-)
> In the last paragraph you say it "would be helpful" to amend the license
> but really it is essential to do this in order to be in Debian as the
> license is clearly non-free.
For sure.
> You don't mention that other programs borrow from the code but are still
> bound by the non-free clauses. To me this is the strongest point, that
> the Phylip authors probably did intend to share their code openly but in
> fact are using a non-standard license is causing real problems for other
> developers.
Good point. Added SeaView as example to make the point even more clear.
> Not to mention the whole revenue thing is probably meaningless because
> "generating revenue" can technically include winning academic grants or
> charging for Bio-Linux courses, both of which we do. And even if it was
> a meaningful clause it's probably unenforceable as a condition of
> redistribution since this is a restriction on usage ie. a EULA. Etc.
> etc..
Right. Do you want to add this argument to the petition text?
> I'm wondering how many other nearly-free things we'd like to free up,
> maybe not just in biology but science in general. The UCSC genome
> browser source springs to mind. Also SSAHA2 which is rendered
> closed-source by the incorporation of some UW cross_match code. If the
> petition got somewhat bigger we might even get some "big names" to sign
> it. But first things first.
This exactly was my intention. Because I was directly confronted with
PhyLip I wanted to use this as kind of guinea pig how such kind of
petitions might work. When we did discussed the issue at the meeting
the opinions about such a thing did vary and so my question about other
programs became void. However, I think if nobody tries nothing will
happen. So if anybody would subscribe here - even if not participant of
the meeting this would help.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
Reply to: