Re: Please consider a free license for all code parts of Cluster 3.0
Hi Michiel,
thanks for your quick and helpful reply.
On Mon, Feb 01, 2016 at 10:54:35AM +0900, Michiel de Hoon wrote:
> Personally I am in favor of changing the license to Cluster 3.
Great.
> However,
> since the GUI design is based on Michael Eisen's original Cluster program, I
> can only change the license if the license to the original Cluster program
> is changed as well. Michael Eisen himself is most likely in favor as well,
> but as far as I know the official owner of the software is Stanford
> University, so you would have to get agreement from them.
> Btw, Michael Eisen left Stanford more than 10 years ago, so you may not be
> able to reach him at his Stanford email address.
I somehow had expected something like this and I assume if you would
know either a current email addres of Michael Eisen or some responsible
person at Standord you would have probably written it in you mail. So I
(perhaps somebody else here on the list) will try to find out).
Kind regards and thanks again
Andreas.
> Best,
> -Michiel.
>
> On 1/31/16 02:55, Andreas Tille wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >I'm writing you on behalf of the Debian Med team which is a subgroup
> >inside Debian with the objective to package free software with relevance
> >in the field of biology and medicine. Since you seem to be interested
> >in biology you might like to have a look on our related page which
> >lists the packaged software in this field[1].
> >
> >While you can also find cluster3 on this list it is mentioned in the
> >non-free section since parts of the code in Cluster are llicensed under
> >conditions that are in contrast with the Debian Free Software Guidelines
> >(DFSG)[2].
> >
> >The problematic parts in the license is the explicit restriction that
> >you can not take any fee. The idea bahind is that we need to allow
> >people selling Debian media which amongst thousand of other code would
> >contain also your software - which does not allow taking money for the
> >set of DVDs (blue rays, USB, whatever).
> >
> >Parts of the code are also restricting the free use to non-commercial
> >use cases which is in conflict with items 5. and 6. of DFSG.
> >
> >Since we are interested to distribute Cluster in main Debian we wonder
> >whether you might like to reconsider the licensing to cover all parts of
> >the code by a free license. The advantage would be that way more
> >quality assurance means are taken for code inside main Debian which
> >should be also in your interest.
> >
> >In case you do not intend the licensing I would probably extract the
> >free parts (command line and development tools) into a separate
> >packaging to move at least these into main Debian while keeping just the
> >GUO part which is affected by the licensing issues mentioned above in
> >non-free. I'm just asking here before I'm doing this work whether I
> >could save my time for more productive stuff. ;-)
> >
> >Thanks for considering and kind regards
> >
> > Andreas.
> >
> >[1] http://blends.debian.org/med/tasks/bio
> >[2] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> >
>
>
--
http://fam-tille.de
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