Bug#96890: lmbench is not GPL
On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 10:01:02AM +0200, Roderich Schupp wrote:
> I'm looking at lmbench-2beta3. I guess you refer to the file
> COPYING-2 which reads:
>
>
> The set of programs and documentation known as "lmbench" are distributed
> under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License with the
> following additional restrictions (which override any conflicting
> restrictions in the GPL):
>
> 1. You may not distribute results in any public forum, in any publication,
> or in any other way if you have modified the benchmarks.
>
> 2. You may not distribute the results for a fee of any kind. This includes
> web sites which generate revenue from advertising.
>
> If you have modifications or enhancements that you wish included in
> future versions, please mail those to me, Larry McVoy, at lm@bitmover.com.
>
>
> Your "severe limitation" seems to be the prohibition to publish
> results FROM A MODIFIED VERSION of the benchmarks. Well, that's
> actually in the nature of a benchmark - if you can tweak it,
> then any results are useless. About the same as altering the text of a RFC
> and distributing it.
Yes, it's in the nature of benchmarks.
More particularly, that's a limitation on modification - the modified
version does not carry the same rights as the original.
As important is #2, which is a restriction on use.
Both of these violate the Debian Free Software Guidlines. lmbench can
not go in main. What's worse is that 'modified the benchmarks' is not
terribly well defined; if you need to apply a patch to the Debian
package, will it even produce publishable numbers?
--
Daniel Jacobowitz Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Monta Vista Software Debian Security Team
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