Hi Jorge,
On Mon, Oct 06, 2014 at 04:48:28PM +0100, Jorge Sebastião Soares wrote:
> I am in direct contact with the upstream author of gubbins (sit next to him
> really).
> Gubbins has a dependency on a piece of software called Fastml. Fastml is
> not free. Actually is published under no license.
This sucks.
> It has copyright and a
> note saying that anyone wishing to make changes to the code needs to
> contact the author.
>
> For gubbins to work, Fastml needed to be changed. Gubbins upstream has
> contacted the author of Fastml. The author was happy for the code to be
> changed, but has stated that he doesn't wish the code to be published under
> any kind of free license (actually under any kind of licence).
>
> I was approaching the problem of packaging gubbins in the most sensible way
> I found. Package Fastml, then package gubbins and state Fastml as a gubbins
> dependency. I would have to maintain two more packages, but hey...
>
> Now the question is, what is the best way to go about this?
As far as I know a package with no license at all is simply not
redistributable ... since it is lacking the permission to be distributed
(even in non-free).
May be there are alternatives with the same
functionality or we try to convince the author to pick at least any
license (also for his own safety!) - preferably a free one.
Just for
the name similarity (*ML): We just managed to convince an author of
some frequently used, long standing non-free license to pick a free
one[1].