-=| gregor herrmann, Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 07:32:31PM +0200 |=- > Two days ago Ansgar detected that audio-cd (binary package: > libaudio-cd-perl) has an "interesting" license (it seems I was not > looking closely enough when I adopted the package, sorry for that and > thanks to Ansgar). This is a good catch indeed! > README and CD.{xs,pm} contain the following statement: > > Copyright (C) 1999-2002 by Doug MacEachern > > When included as part of the Standard Version of Perl or as > part of its complete documentation whether printed or > otherwise, this work may be distributed only under the terms > of Perl's Artistic License as included in the file COPYING. > Any distribution of this file or derivatives thereof outside > of that package requires that special arrangements be made > with copyright holder. > > I'm not sure I really understand the message of this paragraph, but > the part with "derivates ... special arrangements be made with > copyright holder" sound like a violation of the DFSG (at least #3). I'd say it also fails DFSG#1 as any distribution is not allowed. > Additional notes: > * There is no mail address of the copyright holder anywhere in the > source. But at least Google and CPAN know him. Yeah. Dough is one of the mod_perl authors. Seeing such a restrictive license is a big surprise to me. > * The version of Audio::CD on CPAN is outdated (0.04), the current > version seems to be from the disc-cover homepage. > * 0.04 does not have these notice. (In fact no copyright/license at > all.) I don't know which is better :) > * audio-cd has two reverse dependencies: disc-cover and yaret. For reference, according to PopCon stats, disc-cover has about 200 installs, last upload a couple of dais ago. yaret has about 100 installs in PopCon, last upload in March 2006. > Before I start to file bugs, move packages to non-free, contact the > authors or whatever I'd appreciate thoughts from others on the > situation and the best way to deal with it. Well, a serious bug is to be filed as it seems that currently Debian distributes the package without permission. A (polite) mail to the author is in order too. Afer all, chances are that he meant "same as Perl, if you need something else contact me". -- dam JabberID: dam@jabber.minus273.org
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