Bug#685575: opentracker is Beerware
On 12/18/2012 4:14 AM, Tanguy Ortolo wrote:
> Ben Johnson, 2012-12-17 22:39-0500:
>> opentracker is considered "Beerware", which is a legitimate
>> licensing mechanism (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware
>> ).
>
> Yes, but is that license well-known enough so we can consider the
> simple statement “this software is considered beerware”, with
> neither a license text nor a link to such a text, as a valid
> indication that this software is indeed licensed under the terms of
> that free license?
>
>> The author also discusses this very subject (uncertainty
>> regarding opentracker's licensing terms) at
>> http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker
>> , and offers the following:
>>
>> "If anyone ever would have asked, I would have provided a
>> special permission to re-distribute opentracker under every
>> brain-fart-licencing scheme is the flavour of the year now. Hand
>> written, if necessary. I'm astonished what the community nowaday
>> demands from programmers to graciously accept the software given
>> away for free.
>>
>> Take it or leave it."
>>
>> So, there we have it; the software is free in every sense of the
>> word.
>
> I would not be that optimistic. The author has indeed made his
> intention clear: this program is certainly intended to be free. But
> is it really? That would not be the first license bug we
> encounter…
>
> Ben, if you achieve to get erdgeist to explicit that license, by
> either adding the full license text (that is only three lines) or a
> link to its original text on the Web to te source package, that
> would be great. I tried that, and failed (I think I only managed
> to annoy him), but you may have more chance.
>
Thank you for the reply, Tanguy.
The "README" that is included with the source states the following (at
the very bottom):
-------------------------------------------
License information:
Although the libowfat library is under GPL, Felix von Leitner aggreed
[sic] that the compiled binary may be distributed under the same beer
ware license as the source code for opentracker. However, we like to
hear from happy customers.
-------------------------------------------
It seems fair to say that there is no ambiguity regarding the author's
intentions with respect to licensing. (You seem to agree with this
assessment.)
Then question then becomes whether or not the "Beerware" license is
sufficiently well-known to be considered for inclusion in Debian. One
of the comments from your blog post (cited previously in this
discussion) states:
"thursday 02 june 2011 à 03:42 Anonymous said : #8
The license is Beerware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware, and
should be fine, Debian for example has plenty of code with such
license already."
Is it possible to authenticate this statement? In particular, "...
Debian for example has plenty of code with such license already."
If this statement is true, and Debian already includes software that
is licensed as "Beerware", then I do not see the problem with
including opentracker.
Out of curiosity, what's to stop me from downloading the opentracker
source code, adding a licensing notice of my choosing to the "README"
file (while leaving the original notice intact), and then
redistributing the software to the Debian project under the new license?
Would Debian demand that I provide written permission from the
original author? In what form? How could Debian be sure that the
document granting permission is genuine?
Obviously, it would be much simpler if erdgeist would simply add the
actual license text (even if only three lines), or even a link to the
Beerware Wiki article, to the README. I haven't had any luck
contacting him over the years, either (regarding documentation
questions, mostly), but I'll keep at it.
Thanks again,
-Ben
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