Bug#431883: dcraw license does not give permission to distribute modified versions or source alongside (original) (raw)

Package: dcraw Version: 7.02-1 Severity: serious

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007, Steve King wrote:

However I would appreciate it if the assembled masses of legal experts could confirm that they agree that this is the case.

There's actually an even more fundamental problem with dcraw.c:

/* dcraw.c -- Dave Coffin's raw photo decoder Copyright 1997-2007 by Dave Coffin, dcoffin a cybercom o net

This is a command-line ANSI C program to convert raw photos from any digital camera on any computer running any operating system.

No license is required to download and use dcraw.c. However, to lawfully redistribute this code, you must either (a) include full source code* for all executable files containing RESTRICTED functions, (b) remove all RESTRICTED functions, re-implement them, or copy them from an earlier, unrestricted Revision of dcraw.c, or (c) purchase a license from the author.

The functions that process Foveon images have been RESTRICTED since Revision 1.237. All other code remains free for all uses.

*If you have not modified dcraw.c in any way, a link to my homepage qualifies as "full source code".

Revision:1.387Revision: 1.387 Revision:1.387 Date:2007/06/2400🔞52Date: 2007/06/24 00🔞52 Date:2007/06/2400🔞52 */

You'll notice that we have no permission to distribute modified versions of dcraw.c as required by the DFSG. Secondly, it appears that we must include full source code if we've modified dcraw.c, but we don't do that. We distribute source alongside.

If you could get Dave Coffin to explicitely dual license under the GPL, that'd clarify this entire problem. [He seems to want a copyleft, which the GPL would grant.]

Text like:

Alternately, you can redistribute and/or modify this work under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

would do the trick.

Don Armstrong

-- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. -- Steven Wright

http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu

Reply to: