On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 9:31 AM, Jonathan Wiltshire wrote: > tag 653877 + moreinfo > thanks > > On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 04:36:19PM -0500, Michael Gilbert wrote: >> package: replaceit >> version: 1.0.0-5 >> severity: serious >> >> According to the replaceit LICENSE file, this software needs to abide >> by the following restriction: "Redistributions are made at no charge >> beyond the reasonable cost of materials and delivery." This seems to >> be non-free as "reasonable" could be interpreted to mean anything; >> thus selling the a Debian CD or other collection (a freedom) could >> easily be restricted under this clause. > > I don't believe this is the case; you quote section 1a of the license which > is an alternative to section 1b, and section 1b grants the appropriate > freedoms: > > (b) Redistributions are accompanied by a copy of the Source Code or by an > irrevocable offer to provide a copy of the Source Code for up to three > years at the cost of materials and delivery. Such redistributions > must allow further use, modification, and redistribution of the Source > Code under substantially the same terms as this license. For the > purposes of redistribution "Source Code" means the complete compilable > and linkable source code of ReplaceIt including all modifications. > > (we redistribute with source included and under the same license terms)
I would agree with that. On further interpretation, it seems to me that section 1 really has no relevance to the entire license at all. It just states what qualifies for categorization as freeware or open source, but nowhere else in the license are those terms used. So all of the wording there is kind of pointless; unless those restrictions really are supposed to have meaning, but they just weren't written well. That's the danger the author chose by going with some nonstandard on-off license. Anyway, the issue that led me into looking at this was that debian/copyright and the LICENSE file differ. I was going to do a QA upload to fix some things in the package and get the copyright file in shape. Best wishes, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
