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Bug#295288: [Fwd: Re: sendEmail license]

Changing to a free package.

--
David Moreno Garza <damog@damog.net> | http://www.damog.net/
 Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. 
 GPG: C671257D - 6EF6 C284 C95D 78F6 0B78 FFD3 981C 5FD7 C671 257D
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Hi David,

I hadn't really considered that the phrase about not using
sendEmail for spam would make it non-free.  I think I agree
with your assessment and I would be happy to remove that
clause from sendEmail's license in order to get it included
in the Debian archives.  I don't think by removing that
clause from sendEmail I will be empowering spamers anyway-
they already have plenty of tools for sending their spam ;-)

I just updated the sendEmail-v1.52.tar.gz package on my site.
Please let me know if you have success including it in the
Debian archives, I would be happy to have it included in one
of my favorite distributions :)

Thanks for the input,
Brandon Zehm


David Moreno Garza wrote:


Hello Brandon,

I've been playing around with sendEmail and I have found it interesting
to get officially into Debian's archive.

The only thing I see a little bit twisted is the license. sendEmail is
released under the GPL, but it has a clause which literally stands for:

*** The use of this software for sending spam ***
*** or unsolicited email is explicitly denied ***

As you (obviously because you should wrote that) see, this makes your
software a non-free one, since you are forbidding a field of endeavor.
I, and hopefully every person involved on the Debian project, understand
your concern about spam issues, but don't you think it would be wiser to
eliminate this clause since, if you are free software involved, this
would make your software a completely pure free software?

I don't know if I can get you with my point, but I do think no software
released under GPL really need to forbid any kind of usage, no matter
what it could be used for, that obviously depends on the user and the
third party warranty you could give with that.

I'm also interested on puring sendEmail to get into Debian's main
archive section, instead of the non-free section.

Thanks,

--
David Moreno Garza <damog@damog.net> | http://www.damog.net/
Double your drive space - delete Windows! GPG: C671257D - 6EF6 C284 C95D 78F6 0B78 FFD3 981C 5FD7 C671 257D

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