Re: Packaging Digest::Elf - licensing question
Nick Morrott <knowledgejunkie@gmail.com> writes:
> I would like to package the CPAN module Digest::Elf, but the upstream
> package contains no details about its license [1].
This is really the root of the problem. The algorithm itself isn't an
issue in my opinion (see below), but all the surrounding packaging
machinery is copyrighted and needs some sort of explicit license.
This is probably just an oversight of the author. I would mail them and
ask them if they could include an explicit license statement in the
package, and point them at:
http://www.perlfoundation.org/cpan_licensing_guidelines
for some general guidelines on how to do so.
> The distribution contains the following information about the algorithm
> used:
> "The actual algorith was culled from a Dr. Dobbs Journal article and
> they culled it, I think, from the source for the GNU c complier. If you
> know better, please let me know."
> The elfhash algorithm contained in the Perl XS imlementation [2] is
> essentially the same as that found in the GNU binutils software [3],
> available in the Debian GNU/Linux binutils package, which is GPL3+
> licensed.
I'm not a lawyer, but the algorithm in question here is essentially a
mathematical formula, and is very short. Given the state of copyright
law, someone somewhere probably could try to claim copyright on that
algorithm, but I think it's sufficiently unlikely for us to not worry
about it unless there's some reason to believe someone actually would do
so. My non-lawyer opinion is that there is so little trickery or creative
work going on here that the algorithm itself amounts to uncopyrightable
factual material.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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