package ted retitle 501638 ted: license terms make the work non-free and non-redistributable thanks
I agree that the copyright holder's conditions make the work non-free;
further, the work is non-redistributable, because the recipient cannot
meet the contradictory requirements of both the GPL and the copyright
holder's additional terms.
More specific problems, that would be best resolved at the same time:
On 09-Oct-2008, Roman Mamedov wrote:
> "Ted for Linux: copyright and disclaimer
No copyright statement is given here. A valid copyright statement
looks like:
Copyright © years_published full_legal_name_of_copyright_holder
The word “Copyright” and the copyright symbol “©” are redundant with
each other; one must be present in the statement, and both together
doesn't hurt. The other parts are mandatory for the notice to actually
be a copyright notice.
It also helps to add the copyright holder's contact email address to
further specify which legal entity is being referenced. An example of
a good copyright notice:
Copyright © 2006–2008 Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Ted is free software. By making Ted freely available, I want to
> contribute to the propagation of Linux as a viable platform for
> technical computer enthusiasts. As Ted is free software, I assume
> no responsibility for the consequences of using it. It is up to you
> to decide whether Ted suits your purpose or not.
This would be better expressed as recommended in the GNU GPL document;
it's unclear what is being disclaimed here.
> Ted is distributed with absolutely no warranty under the terms of
> the GNU Public License.
There is no such license by that name; technically this grants no
license since the copyright holder isn't talking about a specific
license that exists.
Presumably this should be “under the terms of the GNU General Public
License, as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
2 of that license or, at your option, any later version”. Without that
text explicit, though, the recipient can not make any assumption of
which terms apply.
> If you include Ted on a CD-ROM or any other medium, or publish Ted
> in any other way, it would be nice to tell me. Please send me a copy
> of your publication or a reference. I like to see what happens to
> Ted and to show off to my friends.
These are requests, not phrased as requirements or restrictions; they
do not affect the freedom of the work. It would be best if they were
not mingled with the license terms for the work, and separated into a
later paragraph.
> You should not publish Ted or software that is based on Ted without
> mentioning me as the original author in all textual documents that
> accompany your software. If you publish Ted, or any piece of
> software that is based on Ted, you must include a copy of the
> original Ted documentation in your distribution. The Ted
> documentation is part of the source code that you have to make
> available to respect the GPL."
All of the above, though, is phrased as restrictions on the recipient;
and these restrictions are additional to what the GNU GPL requires, so
are not compatible with the GNU GPL. The recipient cannot satisfy the
combination of these additional terms and the GNU GPL, so the
recipient has no license to redistribute at all.
Maintainer: please work with upstream to resolve this issue.
Presumably the copyright holder *does* want to release this work under
the GNU GPL, but they've not done so effectively, leaving their work
non-free and not legally redistributable.
The ideal situation would be for the copyright holder to actually
follow the recommendations in the GNU GPL for “How to Apply These
Terms to Your New Programs”, and not re-interpret license terms with
meanings already well-understood.
Feel free to work with the ‘debian-legal’ mailing list to better
understand these issues.
--
\ “I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. |
`\ There's a knob called ‘brightness’ but it doesn't work.” |
_o__) —Eugene P. Gallagher |
Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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