Re: Sys::SigAction
jeffrey.ratcliffe@gmail.com dijo [Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 09:34:18AM +0000]:
> Would I be correct in assuming that the following copyright[1] does not adhere to the DFSG:
>
> You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
> License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file,
> with the exception that it cannot be placed on a CD-ROM or similar media
> for commercial distribution without the prior approval of the author.
>
> A shame, as it is included in forks[2], which would be really useful.
I agree with other people that have commented here that the author
should be contacted, politely asking him to change - But I would
include the futility of his request as part of the argumentation. Feel
free to quote me if you think it can be helpful.
So far, the CPAN -and the whole Perl community has been way more
relaxed than Debian in its licensing requirements and
guidelines. However, the license chosen by Sys::Sigaction's authors is
not only unfit for Debian, it also constitutes a problem for CPAN as a
whole. There are several books including a CD-ROM with Perl modules. I
have somewhere on my bookshelf a ~1997 book that contained a (then)
complete copy of the CPAN. If such a book were to be published today,
it would immediately be violating Sys::Sigaction's licensing - as it
is for a comercial distribution media. Not only that - Adding this
restriction makes the regular Perl ("GPL or Artistic at your option")
licensing scheme fall back to "Artistic" only, as adding restrictions
to GPL distribution is not allowed.
There are other pitfalls (i.e. what does _really_ "prior approval of
the author" mean, specially if the software is not registered with
your national copyright-enforcing body). But I think (hope?) the above
arguments are enough.
In any case, if you (or $whoever) have a package which uses
Sys::SigAction, remember it is still candidate for inclusion in
non-free. Your package could go, of course, in contrib.
--
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.org - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244
PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
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