Re: New Jalview release -- hesitating on license
Hi Pierre,
On 27.11.20 23:10, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Pierre,
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 10:48:13PM +0100, Pierre Gruet wrote:
>> I'm stumbling upon the license terms of a part of the code (which is
>> important enough so that the whole program really needs it) of the new
>> release of Jalview I am packaging: that part has a license identical to
>> BSD-3-clause except that clause 3 bas been changed to:
>>
>> 3. Redistributions must acknowledge that this software was
>> originally developed by the UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory
>> under support by the NIH National Center for Research Resources,
>> grant P41-RR01081.
>>
>> I'm really doubting this can be seen as DFSG-free:
>> - "acknowledge" seems vague to me;
>> - it looks like someone could be sued if he made a derived work without a
>> sentence about the original developer and the grant number.
> I agree it is vague but I personally assume that its just that you
> mention the authors in your scientific results.
I also think it is fine. Just paste it as such in d/copyright for the
files this appears in.
>> Maybe you have a definitive answer? Else should I write to
>> debian-legal@lists.debian.org or to FTPmasters ?
> Keeping upstream as well as debian-legal in CC makes sense.
I do not see anything of concern here. A note that the creator of a file
shall not be forgotten over time you find almost everywhere. And here
they also ask to mention the grant number. Fine with me. Actually, as a
tax payer I even somewhat appreciate this and it may be of historic
interest to chase up how different folks came together in various grants
over time or how different grants from different decades interact in
larger workflows or how long it takes until a new development finds it
ways into desktop machines.
We should probably also find a way to model that in d/u/metadata ... but
days only have 24 hours ... maybe not.
>
> Thanks a lot for your support in any case,
> Thanks to you
Also from my side.
Steffen
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