Package: edict Version: 2006.10.09-1 Severity: serious Justification: Policy 2.2.1
Hi, Current license for edict and kanjidic seems to be CC by-sa 2.5, which is different from a custom license described in debian/copyright and is not DFSG-free. IMHO the best solution for this situation is proposing an upgrade of the license to CC by-sa 3.0 and including licence.html in the source packages. Detailed descriptions ===================== First of all, there are three facts: * Although the license statement described in debian/copyright in the edict and kanjidic packages seems to be a custom license of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group at Monash University, which is considered to be DFSG-free, the online license statement[1] says these packages are distributed under CC by-sa. * There are no license descriptions in .orig.tar.gz tarballs of Debian source packages for edict and kanjidic, which seem to be rolled by you package maintainers since the upstream does not distribute the software (dictionary data files) as a tarball. However, edict_doc.html and kanjidic_doc.html point the online license page for license information. So, what is described on that page now is the actual license statement. * The online license page only says that the license for distribution is CC by-sa and does not specify its version. However, the license deed and full license code linked from that page is ones of CC by-sa 2.5, which is not considered to be DFSG-free. >From these facts, I guess that the upstream changed the license from the custom one to CC by-sa 2.5 without notice. It is obvious from web.archive.org[2] that the current license was already used in July, 2006. To solve this situation, I make two proposals: * To give the upstream suggestions to upgrade the license to CC by-sa 3.0 and to specify that version clearly in the license page. * To include licence.html in the Debian source packages for edict and kanjidic. Although whether Debian now declare CC by 3.0 and CC by-sa 3.0 to be DFSG-free or not was uncertain[3], I hope CC by-sa 3.0 is considered to be DFSG-free now that ttf-konatu[4], a Japanese font package licensed by CC by-sa 3.0, has got in the Debian main archive. # I am maintaining the skkdic package and its upstream release # contains an edict-derivative dictionary (My predecessors and I have # considered it to be non-free and excluded it from the package). # Also, I'd like to package a program which uses kanjidic2.xml. So, I # hope I will hear a good news. [1] http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/edrdg/licence.html [2] http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/edrdg/licence.html [3] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_3#Debian [4] http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/ttf-konatu.html Many thanks, -nori -- System Information: Debian Release: 4.0 APT prefers stable APT policy: (500, 'stable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-686 Locale: LANG=ja_JP.eucJP, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.eucJP (charmap=EUC-JP) -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
