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

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 03:45:29 -0700 Don Armstrong wrote:

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007, Steve King wrote:

You'll notice that we have no permission to distribute modified versions of dcraw.c as required by the DFSG.

I don't agree with you here. It seems to me that we do have permission to distribute modified versions, provided source is included.

The license does not explicitely grant the ability to create a derivative work and distribute that work. It merely talks about "lawfully redistributing this code".

Since it fails to specifically grant that right, we must assume that the default state ("All rights reserved") applies.

For the record, I agree with Don's analysis.

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.

All that is required in this license is a link to David's home page. The build process does not modify the file dcraw.c, so the footnote clause is applicable to this version of dcraw that would be included in debian.

dcraw.c itself isn't currently modfied, but the package does form a derivative work at some level. You can likely argue either way, but given that a need to apply a security patch to dcraw would cause us to run afoul of the license makes it rather problematic from where I'm sitting.

Again, I agree with Don.

Disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.

-- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/testing_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian testing installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4

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