Bug#214478: spellcast: licence is non-free
Package: spellcast
Version: 1.0-14
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 2.1
Recommendation: remove-from-testing, (probably) remove-from-unstable
As per the recent licence discussions on debian-legal[1], I believe that the
licence for spellcast to be non-conformant to the Debian Free Software
Guidelines. As such, it should be removed from the main archive and, if
desired, re-uploaded to the non-free queue (where I believe it would be
appropriate).
I think it should be removed from testing immediately, so that this software
doesn't make it's way onto a CD set which would be sold by our CD vendors,
with the decision to be removed from unstable to be made at a more leisurely
pace.
The general gist of the problem is that the original "licence" (if you want
to call it that) was very vague, and clarifications by the original packager
of spellcast (Ben Gertzfield) only managed to make it clearer that the
upstream author (based on the wishes of the game's designer) wanted to
disallow commercial distribution. This is clearly a practical problem for
CD vendors, who may sell their CDs at a profit, since the game designer
(Richard Bartle) said that people can't sell his work for a profit, but "if
they charge for it to cover distribution costs, well, OK."
The complete licence information in the copyright file for spellcast is
archived at [1].
[1]
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200310/msg00136.html
- Matt
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