Hi Riley, On 07/03/2016 19:20, Riley Baird wrote:
The distribution of modified PDB data including the records HEADER, CAVEAT, REVDAT, SPRSDE, DBREF, SEQADV, and MODRES in PDB format and their mmCIF and XML equivalents is not allowed.I'm not sure what the PDB format is, so I might be wrong, but my intuition is that trying to stop people from distributing data in a certain file format would be non-free.
We had this discussion some years back about SwissProt protein sequence entries included as test data in EMBOSS. We also have PDB files in the EMBOSS test data.
The conclusion was that scientific data (SwissProt, PDB, etc.) are scientific facts and it is not reasonable to require permission to change them.
The license says you may not alter the entries in the PDB database (text file) and redistribute it in any of its original formats - because PDB releases must only come from the curators of the database.
It may help to consider an equivalent in another field. Imagine an open source package that included a copy of the Declaration of Independence. It would not be reasonable to insist on permission to change the text, for example to add a phrase from Animal Farm ... "but some are more equal than others"
Hope that helps, Peter Rice