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Templates for relicencing requests.



Le Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 11:59:27AM -0500, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso a écrit :
> On 14/06/2008, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh@gmail.com> wrote:
> > So this is what needs to be replaced?
> >
> >      http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/triangle.html
> 
> So I'm thinking that it's not a bad idea to first ask if he's willing
> to relicense his code with a free license...

Hi Jordi,

We drafted a letter two years ago for software without licence at all:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScienceSampleLetter

And here is one that I used successfully to get a relicencing from
4-clause BSD to 3-clause BSD. Upstream had to make the effort to get
approval from the IP persons of his university !

Have a nice day,

-- Charles

Dear Dr <Upstream>,

        I am a member of the Debian-Med project, which focuses on
bringing easy-to-install software to biological and medical researchers.
We are interested to package your program <Program name> for the Debian
GNU/Linux OS, but there is a minor problem in the licence which would
make our work harder.

        The Debian operating system consists only free software, to
which is added a separate "non-free" section. We have our own guidelines
to decide whether a licence is free or not, the Debian Free Software
Guidelines:

http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

        Unfortunately the licence of <Program name> has a mandatory
advertisement clause in its paragraph 3. While it sounds fair at the
level of one program, it would just make the distribution of thousands of
programs with a similar clause very problematic on a logistical point of
view. This problem has been taken seriously by the universities of Utah
and California (which wrote the so-called "BSD licence" that was used as
a template for the licence of <Program name>). In 1998 and 1999 respectively,
these universities removed the clause 3 from their licences, to ease the
redistribution of their works. You can find more information about this
on the following web page:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

        In addition, making the citation of your article mandatory in the
licence also makes it non-free because we insist on distributing
software which does not restrict the usage that the user can make. As an
academic, I of course agree that <Program name> must be cited when used, and as
a happy user, this is what I will definitely do. But If you do not
intend to enforce this clause this part of licence legally, rephrasing
it by something like "Please cite" would make the licence free while
giving the same message. In the end, isn't it more the role of the editors
and reviewers to ensure that a proper material and methods is written
and contains the appropriate citations?

        We would like to ask you to consider modifying the the license of
<Program name>. <Program name> is a very popular program for molecular biologists, and
we would really love to distribute it in Debian. But in the current
situation, it could only be part of the non-free distribution, which has
a lower priority for us because dealing with the peculiarities of each
non-free licences consumes lots of time that we prefer investing in
bringing more free software to our users.

        I hope I convinced you to ask <Upstream's employer and copyright holder> to
relicence <Program name> under a licence similar to the "revised BSD license".
In any case, please feel free to ask more informations if your
institution is reluctant to drop the advertisement clause.

Best regards,


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