Re: [Meme-suite] Free software license for MEME?
Hi Charles,
thanks a lot for your quick response which motivates me to possibly
trigger a new "period of consideration" ;-)
The Debian Med project is an effort inside Debian to package Free
Software in the field of bioinformatics and medicine for official Debian
for the profit of users in this field that are running Debian or any of
its derivatives like Ubuntu, Mint, BioLinux or others. In the nearly 20
years of existence of the Debian Med project we gathered lots of
positive responses of users.
We experienced an amazing response specifically since the COVID-19
crisis started. It becomes pretty clear to many users and upstreams
that now is the time to stay together and provide the knowledge of code
freely to everybody without any restrictions. (I had a talk about this
amazing success and support recently at FOSSASIA summit[1] - recording
of the 25min video is to be expected soon.)
We have quite some record[2] in our team to discuss with upstreams
successfully to release their code under a DFSG free license. There are
several good reasons for you to consider this since Debian has quite
some infrastructure for continuous integration, is caring for
portability to a wide range of hardware architectures (arm64 comes to
mind once Apple will switch to this architecture but lots of others as
well) and we are usually pretty quick in adapting code to recent
compilers (I did a quick check yesterday and realised some issues of
MEME with gcc-10 but my interest to dive into this is reduced if we
can not publish a Debian package of MEME anyway). All this is backed
up and documented by a bug tracking system. If patches are provided
we'll keep you updated about this.
You might like to weight your advantages of this against the advantages
you see in your team to keep the code under the current license.
I also like to point you to some interesting reading[3] of the upsteam
author of kallisto who had changed his mind about licensing of his code.
We would be really happy if you would consider involving us in your
next disussion period about licensing MEME. ;-)
Kind regards and thanks again for your quick response
Andreas.
[1] https://eventyay.com/e/fa96ae2c/session/6730
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/SoftwareLiberation
[3] https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/i-was-wrong-part-2/
On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 04:05:04PM -0700, Charles E Grant wrote:
> Hi Nilesh,
>
> Thanks for your suggestion. We do periodically consider this, but for the time being we’re sticking with the current license for the MEME Suite.
>
> Charles
>
> > On Mar 24, 2021, at 4:13 AM, Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thanks for all your work on MEME :-)
> > We actually were willing to package MEME inside Debian, so that folks
> > using Debian or derivatives could simply: "$sudo apt-get install meme"
> >
> > And use your great work with ease!
> >
> > However, we experience a problem - The current license for MEME states:
> >
> > """
> > Those desiring to incorporate this software into commercial
> > products or use for commercial purposes should contact the
> > Technology Transfer Office, University of California, San
> > Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California, 92093-0910,
> > Phone: (858) 534-5815.
> > """
> >
> > This actually ends up going against the Debian Free software
> > Guidelines[1] (point no. 6 - The license must not restrict anyone from making
> > use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may
> > not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being
> > used for genetic research),
> > and makes it harder (if not impossible) to package and vendor this
> > software in the archive.
> >
> > Could you please modify the license and allow "everyone" to freely copy,
> > modify, and distribute the software?
> > Or make it free software for everyone? Or even better use a free
> > software in parcticular DFSG compatible license[2]?
> >
> > Please do let us know.
> >
> > [1]: https://www.debian.org/social_contract (scroll downwards to see DFSG)
> > [2]: https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses
> >
> > Thanks and regards,
> > Nilesh
> > _______________________________________________
> > Meme-suite mailing list
> > Meme-suite@u.washington.edu
> > http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/meme-suite
>
>
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