Please consider a free license for all code parts of Cluster 3.0
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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