[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Grab bag of questions



Matthew Palmer wrote:

Neither of those files grants your the right to make unlimited copies of the
original source, let alone distribute modified versions.  The "addendum"
might be considered to allow unmodified distribution, but it contradicts the
previous EULA.  As such, it is not suitable for any part of Debian, as we
cannot distribute the software in any form.

That's rather what I gathered from the license, hence why I'm waiting for a response from Raven. The source page from Raven wasn't much help either. http://www2.ravensoft.com/source/

If they're the typical .h files, /usr/include/acc would be as good a place
as any.

They're not, they're .acs files. I think I'm going to rename the package as acc-zeth once I get some license clarificition, since it's specific to zeth anyway.

The contents of debian/copyright would be "the material in this package has
been illegally copied from http://zdoom.doomworld.com/.  I'm expecting the
process server any minute."

Why?  Because absent an explicit licence to make copies, *any* copyrightable
work has the protection of copyright, which grants to the author of the work
the exclusive right to make copies.  Anyone else making a copy of the work
is in breach of copyright laws.

I've sent the author a message about this on his forums, I can't imagine he'd have a problem with it. I asked him for the official copyright statement, hopefully he'll get back to me soon.

Get acc and zeth-doc removed ASAP. I don't know about the others. Certainly, anything released under the "EULA" is non-distributable.

I don't see an obvious way to do this automatically, or I would. I'll see if somebody in #debian-mentors can get rid of it. The other two packages are basically GPLed, so they shouldn't be an issue.

Nothing in there grants anyone the right to make copies for anyone else. And since the licence mentions Activision a million times, I presume that
the copyright holder of record is Activision, which means that a notice from
Ravensoft is kind of pointless.  If Activision licenced the software to
Ravensoft, or sold the copyrights to them, then that should be noted
somewhere useful.

- Matt


The code is originally Copyright Raven, not Activision. Activision is only mentioned in the EULA. Nowhere in the actual source is Activision mentioned at all. But if I can't get a satisfactory response from Raven fairly soon, I'll see what Activision has to say, not that I expect them to be any sort of help.



Reply to: