About the license of Cluster
Dear Michael,
we, the Debian Med project (CCed on its public mailing list), are
redistributing a large number of bioinformatics software through the
Debian GNU/Linux operating system package archive, and as you probably
know we care deeply about ensuring that what we distribute is Free.
I am contacting you because one of the packages that we distribute,
cluster3, contains code derived from your Cluster software, and
therefore inherited its license.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150109081227/http://rana.lbl.gov/EisenSoftwareSource.htm
Unfortunately, as this license is restricted to the academic/non-profit
community, it does not pass Debian's criteria for freedom.
https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Nevertheless, I was delighted to read on your lab's website that you are
“in the process of making sure our legacy software is all available and
has appropriate open source licenses attached”.
http://www.eisenlab.org/software.html
I was wondering if you had an estimate timeline for that, or if in the
meantime you could give us and the authors of cluster3 the permission to
relicense the cluster derived code under a standard Free license ?
Have a nice week-end,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Akano, Uruma, Okinawa, Japan
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