Re: RFS: QA Upload: mined - Powerful text editor with extensive Unicode and CJK support (updated package)
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 4:39 AM, Mauro Lizaur <lavaramano@gmail.com> wrote:
> originally (i.e. ~ 20 years ago), we took mined from the Minix
> operating system which was a free academic project,
> and the mined.doc file did not mention a copyright.
> So no, I do not think the original author could claim a copyright.
> Also he is not reachable on the net, I had already tried that
> a few years ago.
> But about the copyright with no copyright, i got no answer, what
> should i do in this case?
These days copyright is automatic, I imagine it was 20 years ago too.
It doesn't matter if you claim copyright or not. Copyright is opt-out
only (IIRC some countries do not have opt-out) and the fair use
provisions most probably do not allow what the DFSG requires. So, if
the original Minix version was not freely licenced, then basically
mined needs to be removed from Debian and upstream needs to rewrite
the code from the minix version that is still present in the current
version. I think that 20 years ago the GPL v2 wasn't yet out, so at a
minimum, the debian/copyright is missing information about the licence
of the parts of the source code that are from the original minix
version.
Also, there are some rules that make govt works public domain, perhaps
the original mined falls under that?
As for contacting the original author, perhaps the people at
minix3.org can help. Also, minix is BSD licenced these days, perhaps
it still includes mined?
Please bring some more details up on debian-legal where there are more
knowledgable people.
--
bye,
pabs
http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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